
Fagt 214 

THE NARROWS, UPPER ST. MARY'S LAKE, WITH BARING'S BASIN 
IN THE BACKGROUND 



Blackfeet Tales of 

Glacier National 

Park 

BY 

JAMES WILLARD SCHULTZ 

With Illustrations 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1916 






COPYRIGHT, I916, BY JAMES WILLARD SCHULTZ 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published April iQib 



CAMBRIDGB . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



MAY 12 1916 

©CI.A4289a3 



TO 
LOUIS WARREN HILL, ESQ^ 

TRUE FRIEND TO MY BLACKFEET PEOPLE, AND 
THE ONE WHO HAS DONE MORE THAN ANY OTHER 
INDIVIDUAL, OR ANY ORGANIZATION, TO MAKE THE 
WONDERS OF GLACIER NATIONAL PARK ACCESSIBLE 
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, THIS BOOK IS DEDI- 
CATED BY 

THE AUTHOR 

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, 
SEPTEMBER lO, 1 915' 



Contents 



I. Two Medicine i 

HUGH MONROE I 

THE WOMAN WHO EARNED A MAN's NAME . 12 

THE STORY OF THE THUNDER MEDICINE . 2$ 

II. Pu-NAK-IK-SI (CuTBANk) 43 

HOW MOUNTAIN CHIEF FOUND HIS HORSES 49 

WHITE FUR AND HIS BEAVER CLAN ... 59 



THE STORY OF THE BAD WIFE 
OLD MAN AND THE WOMAN . , 



III. Ki-nuk'-si Is-i-sak'-ta (Little River) 

OLD MAN AND THE WOLVES 
NEW ROBE, THE RESCUER . . 



85 
98 

no 

112 

129 



IV. PuHT-o-MUK-si-KiM-iKS (The Lakes Inside): St. 

Mary's Lakes 146 

THE STORY OF THE FIRST HORSES . . . I58 
ONE HORN, SHAMER OF CROWS . . . . 182 
THE ELK MEDICINE CEREMONY .... I99 

na-wak'-o-sis (the story of tobacco) . 2X6 

V. Iks-i'-kwo-yi-a-tuk-tai (Swift Current River) 226 
the jealous women 227 

VI. Ni-na Us-tak-wi (Chief Mountain) 233 

THE WISE MAN 235 



Illustrations 

The Narrows, Upper St. Mary's Lake, with Bar- 
ing's Basin in the Background .... Frontispiece ^ 

Upper Two Medicine Lake and Rising Bull Moun- 



tain 



8 



V 



Pi'-TA-MAK-AN (RuNNING EaGLE) FaLLS 12 

At Upper Two Medicine Lake 20 .^^ 

Showing Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill, Yel- 
low Wolf, and the author 

Moving Camp from Two Medicine 42 

Our Camp on Cutbank River ........ 46 

Showing Wonderful Runner and Little Plume Moun- 
tains 

Stream from Unnamed Glacier pouring into Cut- 
bank Canyon S^ 

The Beaver Dam 60 

Bighorn Country. Head of Cutbank River ... 80 

Cutbank River. A Good Trout Riffle .... 84 

Black Bull and Stabs-by-Mistake near Lower End 
OF Cutbank Canyon 96 

Stabs-by-Mistake, Sun Woman, and her Son, Little 

Otter, in Cutbank Canyon 106 

ix 



Illustrations 

Big Spring painting Autobiography on the Flesh 

Side of a Tanned Elk-Skin no V 

Sun Woman 128 *^ 

Camp near Lower End of Upper St. Mary's Lake 146 ^ 

At the Narrows, Upper St. Mary's Lake . . . 152 v 

GOING-TO-THE-SUN MOUNTAIN 15^^ 

GoiNG-TO-THE-SuN Chalet, Upper St. Mary's Lake i8o 

Opening of the Elk Medicine Pipe Ceremony . 206 

Elk Medicine Pipe Dance 210 

Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill propitiating 
the Dreaded Under- Water People at Upper Two 
Medicine Lake 212 

Iceberg Lake 226 

En Route to Iceberg Lake 234 

Glacier on Trail to Iceberg Lake 240 

From photographs by R. W. Reed 



BLACKFEET TALES OF 
GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 



Blackfeet Tales of 
Glacier National Park 

I 

Two Medicine 

HUGH MONROE 

July 12, 1915. 

AFTER an absence of many years, I have 
returned to visit for a time my Black- 
feet relatives and friends, and we are 
camping along the mountain trails where, in 
the long ago, we hunted buffalo, and elk, and 
moose, and all the other game peculiar to this 
region. 

To-day we pitched our lodges under Ris- 
ing Wolf Mountain, that massive, sky-piercing, 
snow-crested height of red-and-gray rock which 
slopes up so steeply from the north shore of Up- 
per Two Medicine Lake. This afternoon we saw 
upon it, some two or three thousand feet up 
toward its rugged crest, a few bighorn and a 

I 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

Rocky Mountain goat. But we may not kill 
them ! Said Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill : 
*' There they are! Our meat, but the whites 
have taken them from us, even as they have 
taken everything else that is ours!" And so we 
are eating beef where once we feasted upon the 
rich ribs and loins of game, which tasted all the 
better because we trailed and killed it, and with 
no little labor brought it to the womenfolk in 
camp. 

Rising Wolf Mountain! What a fitting and 
splendid monument it is to the first white man 
to traverse the foothills of the Rockies between 
the Saskatchewan and the Missouri! Hugh 
Monroe was his English name. His father was 
Captain Hugh Monroe, of the English army; his 
mother was Amelie de la Roche, a daughter of a 
noble family of French emigres. Hugh Monroe, 
Junior, was born in Montreal in 1798. In 1814 
he received permission to enter the employ of 
the Hudson's Bay Company, and one year 
later — in the summer of 1815 — he arrived at 
its new post, Mountain Fort, on the North 

2 



Hugh Monroe 

Fork of the Saskatchewan and close to the foot- 
hills of the Rockies. 

At that time the Company had but recently 
entered Blackfeet territory, and none of its en- 
gages understood their language; an interpreter 
was needed, and the Factor appointed Monroe 
to fit himself for the position. The Blackfeet 
were leaving the Fort to hunt and trap along the 
tributaries of the Missouri during the winter, 
and he went with them, under the protection of 
the head chief, who had nineteen wives and two 
lodges and an immense band of horses. By easy 
stages they traveled along the foot of the Rockies 
to Sun River, where they wintered, and then in 
the spring, instead of returning to the Saskatche- 
wan, they crossed the Missouri, hunted in the 
Yellowstone country that summer, wintered on 
the Missouri at the mouth of the Marias River, 
and returned to Mountain Fort the following 
spring with all the furs their horses could carry. 

Instead of one winter, Monroe had passed two 
years with the tribe, and in that time had ac- 
quired a wife, a daughter of the great chief, a 

3 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

good knowledge of the language, and an honor- 
able name, Ma-kwi'-i-po-wak-sin (Rising Wolf), 
which was given him because of his bravery in a 
battle with the Crows in the Yellowstone country. 

During Monroe's two years' absence from the 
Fort, another engage had learned the Blackfeet 
language from a Cree Indian, who spoke it well, 
so that this man became the interpreter, and 
Monroe was ordered to remain with the Piegan 
tribe of the Blackfeet, to travel with them, and 
see that they came annually to the Fort to trade 
in the winter catch of furs. And this exactly 
suited him ; he much preferred roaming the plains 
with his chosen people; the stuffy rooms of the 
Fort had no attractions for a man of his nature. 

How I envy Hugh Monroe, the first white 
man to traverse the plains lying between the 
Upper Saskatchewan and the Upper Missouri, 
and the first to see many portions of the great 
stretch of the mountain region between the 
Missouri and the Yellowstone. He has himself 
often told me that "every day of that life was a 
day of great joy!" 

4 



Hugh Monroe 

Monroe was a famous hunter and trapper, and 
a warrior as well. He was a member of the Ai'-in- 
i-kiks, or Seizer band of the All Friends Society, 
and the duty of the Seizers was to keep order in 
the great camp, and see that the people obeyed 
the hunting laws — a most difficult task at times. 
On several occasions he went with his and other 
bands to war against other tribes, and once, near 
Great Salt Lake, when with a party of nearly 
two hundred warriors, he saved the lives of the 
noted Jim Bridger and his party of trappers. 
Bridger had with him a dozen white men and as 
many Snake Indians, the latter bitter enemies 
of the Blackfeet. The Snakes were discovered, 
and the Blackfeet party was preparing to charge 
them, when Monroe saw that there were white 
men behind them. "Stop! White men are with 
them ! We must let them go their way in peace ! " 
Monroe shouted to his party. 

"But they are Snake white men, and there- 
fore our enemy: we shall kill them all!" the 
Blackfeet chief answered. However, such was 
Monroe's power over his comrades that he finally 

5 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

persuaded them to remain where they were, and 
he went forward with a flag of truce, and found 
that his friend Jim Bridger was the leader of the 
other party. That evening white men and 
Snakes and Blackfeet ate and smoked together! 
It was a narrow escape for Bridger and his hand- 
ful of men. 

Monroe had three sons and three daughters by 
his Indian wife, all of whom grew into fine, stal- 
wart men and women. Up and down the country 
he roamed with them, trapping and hunting, and 
often fighting hostile war parties. They finally 
all married, and in his old age he lived with one 
and another of them until his death, in 1896, in 
his ninety-eighth year. We buried him near the 
buff'alo cliff's, down on the Two Medicine River, 
where he had seen many a herd of the huge ani- 
mals decoyed to their death. And then we named 
this mountain for him. A fitting tribute, I think, 
to one of the bravest yet most kindly men of the 
old, old West! 

At the upper east side and head of this beauti- 
6 



Rising Bull 

ful lake rises a pyramidal mountain of great 
height and grandeur. A frowse of pine timber on 
its lower front slope, and its ever-narrowing side 
slopes above, give it a certain resemblance to a 
buffalo bull. Upon looking at a recent map of 
the country I found that it had been named 
"Mount Rockwell." So, turning to Yellow Wolf, 
I said: "The whites have given that mountain 
yonder the name of a white man. It is so 
marked upon this paper." 

The old man, half blind and quite feeble, 
roused up when he heard that, and cried out: 
"Is it so? Not satisfied with taking our moun- 
tains, the whites even take away the ancient 
names we have given them ! They shall not do 
it! You tell them so! That mountain yonder is 
Rising Bull Mountain, and by that name it 
must ever be called ! Rising Bull was one of our 
great chiefs: what more fitting than that the 
mountain should always bear his name?" 

"Rising Bull was a chief in two tribes," Yel- 
low Wolf went on. "In his youth he married a 
Flathead girl, at a time when we were at peace 

7 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

with that people, and after a winter or two she 
persuaded him to take her across the mountains 
for a visit with her relatives. Rising Bull came 
to like them and all the Flathead people so well 
that he remained with them a number of winters, 
and because of his bravery, and his kind and 
generous nature, the Flatheads soon appointed 
him one of their chiefs. When he was about 
forty winters of age, some young men of both 
tribes quarreled over a gambling game and sev- 
eral were killed on each side. That, of course, 
ended the peace pact; war was declared, and as 
Rising Bull could not fight his own people, he 
came back to us with his Flathead wife, and was 
a leader in the war, which lasted for several 
years. When that was ended, he continued to 
lead war parties against the Crows, the Sioux, 
the Assiniboines, and the far-off Snakes, and was 
always successful. Came the dreadful A/Ieasles 
Winter,^ and with hundreds of our people, he 
died. He left a son. White Quiver, a very brave 
young warrior, and two years after his father's 

* The winter of 1859-60. 
8 



Rising Bull 

death, he was killed in a raid against the 
Crows. 

"Ai! Rising Bull was a brave man. And oh, 
so gentle-hearted! So good to the widows and 
orphans ; to all in any kind of distress ! We must 
in some way see that this mountain continues 
to bear his name," said Tail-Feathers-Coming- 
over-the-Hill. 

And to that I most heartily agree. 

July 15. 

We are a considerable camp of people: Yel- 
low Wolf, my old uncle-in-law; Tail-Feathers- 
Coming-over-the-Hill, another uncle-in-law; Big 
Spring; Two Guns; Black Bull; Stabs-by-Mis- 
take; Eagle Child; Eli Guardipe, or Takes-Gun- 
Ahead. And with them they have their eleven 
women and fourteen children. All are my espe- 
cial friends, and all the men have been to war — • 
some of them many times — and have counted 
coup upon the enemy. Tail-Feathers-Coming 
over-the-Hill has many battle scars on different 
parts of his body. I was with him when he got 

9 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

the last one, in a fight with the Crees. The 
bullet struck him in the forehead, ripped open 
the scalp clear to the back of his head, but did 
not penetrate the skull. He dropped instantly 
when struck, and we at first thought that he was 
dead. It was some hours before he regained 
consciousness. 

With all these men, and especially Tail- 
Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill and Guardipe, 
I hunted and traveled much in the old days. 
Naturally, we spend much of our time telling 
over this-and-that of our adventures. Mean- 
time the children play around, as happy as In- 
dian children ever are, and their mothers do the 
lodge work, which is light, and gather in groups 
to chat and joke. The boys have just been 
skippmg stones on the smooth surface of the 
lake. The number of skips a stone makes be- 
fore it finally sinks, denotes the number of 
wives the caster will have when he reaches 
manhood. 

Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill and Two 
Guns are medicine men. The former has the 

ID 



PItamakan Falls 

Elk medicine pipe, the latter the Water medi- 
cine pipe, both ancient medicines in the tribe. 
They are spiritual, not material, medicines. In 
fact, they are the implements used in prayers to 
the sun and other gods, and each carries with it 
a ritual of its own. Tail-Feathers-Coming-over 
the-Hill has just told me that we will have some 
prayers with his pipe a few days from now. I 
shall be glad to take part in it all once more. 

July 1 6. 
Again my people are filled with resentment 
against the whites. I told them this afternoon 
that the falls in the river between this and 
the lower lake had been given a foolish white 
men's name. I could not tell them what It was, 
for there is no Blackfeet equivalent for the word 
" Trick." But what a miserable, circus-suggest- 
ing name that is to give to one of the most beau- 
tiful of waterfalls, and the only one of its kind in 
America, and in all the world, for all I know! A 
short distance below the outlet of the upper lake 
the river sinks, and a half-mile farther on gushes 

II 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

into sight from a jagged hole halfway up the side 
of a high and almost perpendicular cliflF. 

"In the long ago we named that Pi'tamakan 
Falls," said Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill. 

"Yes? And who was he?" I asked, although 
I had a fair recollection of the story of that per- 
sonage. But I had forgotten the details of it, and 
wanted them all. 

"Not he, but she!" he corrected me. 

"But Pi'tamakan (Running Eagle) is a man's 
name," I objected. 

"True. But this woman earned the right to 
bear a man's name, and so it was given her. She 
was the only woman of our people to receive that 
honor, so far as I know. Listen! You shall hear 
all about it. 

THE WOMAN WHO EARNED A MAn's NAME 

"As a girl, her name was Weasel Woman. She 
was the eldest of two brothers and two sisters, 
and when she had seen fifteen winters both their 
father and mother died. But unlike children in 
such circumstances, they did not give up their 

12 




PI/_TA-MAK-AN (RUNNING EAGLE) FALLS 
The greater part of the stream gushes from the orifice a third of the way up the cliff 



The Story of Running Eagle 

lodge and scatter out to live with relatives and 
friends. Said Weasel Woman: 'Somehow, some 
way, we can manage to live. You boys are old 
enough to hunt and bring in meat and skins. 
We three sisters will keep the lodge in good or- 
der, and tan the skins for our clothing and bed- 
ding, and other uses.' And as she said, so it was 
done, and the orphan family prospered. 

" But Weasel Woman was not satisfied. Many 
young men and many old and rich men wanted 
to marry her, and to all she said 'No!' so loudly, 
and so quickly, that after a time all knew that 
she would not marry. Wherever a party of war- 
riors gathered for a dance or a feast, there she 
was looking on, listening to their talk, and giving 
what help she could. And when a party returned 
from war, she was loudest in praising them. All 
she talked of, all she thought about, was war. 

"On an evening in her twentieth summer a 
large party of warriors started out to cross the 
mountains and raid the Flatheads. They trav- 
eled all night, and when daylight came found 
that Weasel Woman was with them. 

13 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"^Go back! Go home!' the war chief told her. 
But she would not listen. 

"*If you will not let me go with you, I shall 
follow you,' she said. 

" And then spoke up the medicine man of the 
party: 'Chief,' said he, 'I advise you to allow 
her to go with us; something tells me that she 
will bring us good luck.' 

"'Ah! As you advise me, so shall it be,' said 
the war chief; and the woman went on with 
them. No man of that party teased her, nor 
bothered her in any way: every one of them 
treated her as they would a sister. It was the 
strangest war party that ever set forth from any 
tribe of the plains! 

^ "It was at the edge of Flathead Lake that 
they discovered the enemy, a large camp of the 
Flatheads and their friends, the Pend d'Oreilles. 
When night came they went close up to it, and 
the woman said to the war chief: 'Let me go in 
first. Let me see what I can do. I feel that I 
shall be successful in there.* 

"'Gol' the chief told her, 'and we will wait 



The Story of Running Eagle 

for you here, and be ready to help you if you get 
into trouble.' 

"The woman went into the camp, where all 
the best horses of the people — their fast buffalo 
runners, their racers, and their stallions — were 
picketed close to the lodges of the different own- 
ers of them. If she was afraid of being discov- 
ered and killed, she never admitted it. The dy- 
ing moon gave light enough for her to see the 
size and color of the horses. She took her time 
and went around among them, and, making her 
choice, cut the ropes of three fine pinto horses, 
and led them out to where the party awaited 
her. There she tied them, and went back into 
camp with the chief and his men and again came 
out with three horses. Said she then: 'I have 
taken enough for this time. I will await you 
here and take care of what we have.' 

"The men went back several times, and then, 
having all the horses that they could drive rap- 
idly, the party struck for the mountains, and in 
several days' time arrived home without the loss 
of a man or a horse. 

15 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"A few days after the party came into camp 
the medicine lodge was put up, and on the day 
that the warriors counted their coups, and new 
names were given them, an old warrior and medi- 
cine man called Weasel Woman before the peo- 
ple, and had her count her coup — of going twice 
into the enemy's camp and taking six horses. All 
shouted approval of that, and then the medicine 
man gave her the name, Pi'-ta-mak-an, a very 
great one, that of a chief whose shadow had 
some time before gone on to the Sand Hills. 

"After that Pi'tamakan, as we now may call 
her, did not have to sneak after a party in order 
to go to war with them: she was asked to go. 
And after two or three more successful raids 
against different enemies, the Crows, the Sioux, 
and the Flatheads, she herself became a war 
chief, and warriors begged to be allowed to join 
her parties, because they believed that where she 
led nothing but good luck would come to them. 
She now wore men's clothing when on a raid. 
At home she wore her woman clothing. But even 
in that dress she, like any man, gave feasts and 

i6 



The Story of Running Eagle 

dances, and the greatest chiefs and warriors 
came to them, and were glad to be there. 

"On her sixth raid, Pi'tamakan led a large war 
party against the Flatheads, and somewhere on 
the other side of the mountains fell in with a 
war party of Bloods, one of our brother tribes 
of the North. For several days the two parties 
traveled along together, and then one evening 
the Blood chief, Falling Bear, said to Pi'tamak- 
an's servant: 'Go tell your chief woman that I 
would like to marry her.' 

"* Chief, you do not understand,' the boy told 
him. 'She is not that kind. Men are her brothers, 
and nothing more. She will never marry. I can- 
not give her your* message, for I am afraid that 
she would be angry with me for carrying it to 
her.' 

"On the next day, as they were traveling 
along, the Blood chief said to Pi'tamakan: 'I 
have never loved, but I love now. I love you; 
my heart is all yours; let us marry.' 

"'I will not say "yts'' to that, nor will I say 
"no," ' the woman chief answered him. 'I will 



17 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

consider what you ask, and give you an answer 
after we make this raid.' 

"And with that the Blood chief said no more, 
but felt encouraged : he thought that in time she 
would agree to become his woman. 

"That very evening the scouts ahead dis- 
covered a large camp of Flathead and Kootenai 
Indians, more than a hundred lodges of them, 
and when night came both parties drew close in 
to it. Pi'tamakan then ordered her followers to 
remain where they were and told the Blood 
chief to say the same thing to his men. She then 
told the Blood chief to go into the camp and 
take horses, and he went in and returned with 
one horse. 

"*It is now my turn,' said Pi'tamakan, and 
she went in and brought out two horses. 

"The Blood chief went in and brought out 
two horses. 

" Pi'tamakan went in and brought out four 
horses. 

"The Blood chief went in and brought out 
two horses. 

i8 



The Story of Running Eagle 

"Pi'tamakan went in and brought out one 
horse. And then she said to the Blood chief: 
'Our men are becoming impatient to go in 
there and take horses. We will each of us go 
in once more, and then let them do what they 
can.' 

"So the Blood chief went in for the fourth and 
last time, and came back leading four horses, 
making nine in all. And then Pi'tamakan went 
in and cut the ropes of eight horses, and safely- 
led them out, making in all fifteen that she had 
taken. The warriors then went in, making sev- 
eral trips, and then, with all the horses that 
could be easily driven, the big double party 
headed for home. 

' "On the next day, as Pi'tamakan and the 
Blood chief were riding together, he said to her : 
^I love you so much that I can wait no longer 
for my answer. Give it to me now. I believe 
that you are going to say, "Yes, I will be your 



woman." ' 



"Said Pi'tamakan: ^I gave you your chance. 
It would have been yes had you taken more 

19 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

horses than I did from the camp of the enemy. 
But I took the most; therefore I cannot marry 
you.' 

"That was her way of getting around saying 
*no' to the chief. She had beaten him, an old, 
experienced warrior, in the taking of the enemy's 
horses, and he could not ask her again to become 
his woman. It is said that he felt very badly 
about it all. 

"Pi'tamakan now carried a gun when she 
went to war, and used it well in several fights 
with the enemy, counting in all three coups, 
each one of them the taking of a gun from the 
man she herself killed. And then, haiya! On her 
ninth raid she led a party against the Flatheads, 
and while she and all her men were in the camp, 
choosing horses and cutting their ropes, the Flat- 
heads discovered them and began firing, and she 
and five of her men were killed. And so passed 
Pi'tamakan, virgin, and brave woman chief of 
our people. She died young, about seventy 
winters ago." 



10 




AT UPPER TWO MEDICINE LAKE 

Left to right : Tail-feathers-coming-over-the-hill, Yellow Wolf, and the author, relating his 
killing of a grizzly at this particular place, in the long-ago 



Two Medicine Lodge River 

Okan, his vision, is the name the Blackfeet 
have for the great lodge which they annually 
give to the sun, and for the four days of cere- 
monies attending its erection and consecration. 
In our vernacular it is the medicine lodge. I 
asked Yellow Wolf this afternoon why this river 
was named Nat'-ok-i-o-kan, or, as we say. Two 
Medicine Lodge River, and he replied that when 
the Blackfeet first took this great country from 
the Crows, they built a medicine lodge on the 
river, just below the buffalo cliffs. The next 
simimer they built another one in the same place, 
and owing to that the river got its name. 

Yes, this was once the country of the Crows. 
But the Blackfeet saw and coveted it. It was 
about two hundred years ago, as near as I can 
learn, that they came into it from their original 
home, the region of Peace River and the Slave 
Lakes, and little by little forced the Crows south- 
ward until they had driven them to the south 
side of the Yellowstone, or Elk River, as it is 
known to the various Indian tribes of the 
plains. 

21 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

Perhaps, in the first place, the Blackfeet cov- 
eted more than anything else the cliffs on the 
Two Medicine, — just above Holy Family Mis- 
sion, — where the buffalo were decoyed in great 
numbers and stampeded in a huge waterfall of 
whirling brown bodies to death on the rocks 
below. 

The Blackfeet call such a place — there were 
several of them — a pi'skan, sl trap. Extending 
back from the cliff, for a mile or more out on 
the plain, were two ever-diverging lines of rock 
piles, like a huge letter V. Behind these the 
people concealed themselves, and the buffalo 
caller, going out beyond the mouth of the V, by 
certain antics and motions aroused the curiosity 
of the herd until it finally followed him into the 
V. Then the people began to rise up behind it, 
and the result was that, unable to turn either to 
the right or left, from fear of the two lines of 
shouting, robe-waving stampeders, it was driven 
straight to the cliff and over it. 

When I first saw the place, there were at the 
foot of the cliffs tons and tons of buffalo horn tips, 

22 



The Thunder Medicine 

the most time-resisting of any portion of a 
buffalo's anatomy. 

Last night, while the pipe was going the 
rounds, I asked what had become of old Red 
Eagle's Thunder Medicine Pipe, and was told 
that it was still in the tribe, Old Person at 
present being the owner of it. Said Two Guns : 
"That is one of the most ancient and most 
powerful medicines we have. Do you know how 
it came into our possession?" 

THE STORY OF THE THUNDER MEDICINE 

"It was in the long ago. Our fathers had no 
horses then, but used dogs to carry their be- 
longings. 

"One spring, needing the skins of bighorn to 
tan into soft leather for clothing, the tribe moved 
up here to the foot of the Lower Two Medicine 
Lake, and began hunting. Many men would 
surround and climb a mountain, driving the big- 
horn ahead of them, their dogs helping, and at 
last they would come up to the game, often 

23 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

several hundred head, on the summit of the 
mountain. The dogs were then held back, and 
the hunters, advancing with ready bow and 
arrows, would shoot and shoot the bighorn at 
close range and generally kill the most of them. 

"One day, while most of the men were hunt- 
ing, three young, unmarried women went out to 
gather wood, and while they were collecting it 
in little piles here and there, a thunderstorm 
came up. Then said one of them, a beautiful 
girl, tall, slender, long-haired, big-eyed, 'O Thun- 
der! I am pure! I am a virgin! If you will not 
strike us I promise to marry you whenever you 
want me!' 

"Thunder passed on, not harming them, and 
the young women gathered up their firewood 
and went home. 

"On another day these three young women 
went out again for firewood, one ahead of an- 
other along the trail in the deep woods, and 
Mink Woman, she who had promised herself to 
Thunder Man, was last of the three. She was 
some distance behind the others and singing 

24 



The Thunder Medicine 

happily as she stepped along, when out from the 
brush in front of her stepped a very fine-looking, 
beautifully dressed man, and said: 'Well, here I 
am. I have come for you.' 

" ' No, not for me ! You are mistaken. I am 
not that kind; I am a pure woman,' she answered. 

"'But you can't go back on your word. You 
promised yourself to me if I would not strike 
you, and I did not harm you. Don't you know 
me.^ I am Thunder Man.' 

"Mink Woman looked closely at him, and her 
heart beat fast from fear. But he was good to 
look at, he had the appearance of a kind and 
gentle man, and — although thoughtlessly — she 
had made a promise to him, a god, and she could 
not break it. So she answered: 'I said that I 
would marry you. Well, here I am, take me!' 

"Her two companions had passed on; they 
saw nothing of this meeting. Thunder Man 
stepped forward, and kissed her, then took her 
in his arms, and, springing from the ground, 
carried her up into the sky to the land of the 
Above People. 

25 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"But the two young women soon missed her. 
They ran back on the trail, and searched on all 
sides of it, and called and called to her, and of 
course got no reply: 'She may have gone home 
for something,' said one of them, and they hur- 
ried back to camp. She was not there. They 
then gave the alarm, and all the people scattered 
out to look for her. They hunted all that day, 
and wandered about in the woods all night, call- 
ing her name, and got no answer. 

"The next morning Mink Woman's father, 
Lame Bull, made medicine and called in Crow 
Man, a god who sometimes lived with the people. 
*My daughter. Mink Woman, has disappeared,' 
he told the god. 'Find her, even learn where she 
went, and you shall have her for your wife.' 

" ' I take your word,' Crow Man answered him. 
' I believe that I can learn where she went. I may 
not be able to get her now, but I will some 
time, and then you will not forget this promise. 
I have always wanted her for my woman.' 

"Crow Man went to the two young women 
and got them to show him where they had last 

26 



The Thunder Medicine 

seen Mink Woman. He then called a magpie to 
him, and said to the bird : Tly around here and 
find this missing woman's trail' 

"The bird flew around and around, Crow Man 
following it, and at last it fluttered to the ground, 
and looked up at him, and said: *To this spot 
where I stand came the woman, and here her 
trail ends.' 

"'Is it so!' Crow Man exclaimed. 'Well 
stand just where you are and move that long, 
shining black tail of yours. Move it up and 
down, and sideways. Twist it in every direction 
that you can.' 

"The magpie did as he was told, and Crow 
Man got down on hands and knees, and went 
around, watching the shifting, wiggling, fanning 
tail. Suddenly he cried out: 'There! Hold your 
tail motionless in just that position!' and he 
moved up nearer and looked more closely at it. 
The sun was shining brightly upon it, and the 
glistening black feathers mirrored everything 
around. They were now spread directly behind 
the bird's body, and reflected the tree-tops, and 

27 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

the sky beyond them. Long, long, Crow Man 
stared at the tail, the people looking on and hold- 
ing their breath, and at last he said to Lame Bull, 
'I can see your daughter, but she is beyond my 
reach : I cannot fly there. She is up in sky land, 
and Thunder Man has her!' 

"'^z7 Ai! She did promise herself to him the 
other day, if he would spare us,' one of the two 
wood gatherers said, 'but she did not mean it; 
she was only joking. It is no joke!' 

"Lame Bull sat down and covered his head 
with his robe, and wept, and would not be com- 
forted. 

"Thunder Man took Mink Woman to sky 
land with him, and somehow, from the very first 
she was happy there with him; she seemed to 
forget at once all about this earth and her 
parents and the people. It was a beautiful land 
up there : warm and sunny, a country just like 
ours except that it had no storms. Buffalo and 
all the other animals covered the plains, and all 
sorts of grasses and trees and berry-bushes and 
plants grew there as they do here. 

28 



The Thunder Medicine 

"But although Mink Woman was very happy 
there, Thunder Man was always uneasy about 
her, and kept saying to his people, 'Watch her 
constantly; see that she gets no hint of her 
country down below, nor sight of it. If she does, 
then she will cry and cry, and become sick, and 
that will be bad for me.' 

"Thunder Man was often away, and during 
his absence his people kept a good watch on 
Mink Woman, and did all they could to amuse 
her; to keep her interested in different things. 
One day a woman gave her some freshly dug 
mas^^ and she cried out: *0h, how good of you 
to give me these! I must go dig some for my- 
self!' 

"'Oh, no! Don't go! We will dig for you all 
that you can use,' the women told her, but she 
would not listen. 

"'I want the fun of digging them for myself,' 
she told them. ' Somewhere, some time back, I 
did dig them. I must dig them again.' 

^ Mas. I know not the English name for this edible root. 
The French voyageurs' name for it was pommes blanches, 

29 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

" 'Well, if you must, you must,' they answered, 
and gave her a digging stick, and cautioned her 
not to dig a very large one, should she find it, for 
that mas was the mother of all the others, and 
was constantly bringing forth new ones by scat- 
tering her seed to the winds. She promised that 
she would not touch it, and went off happily 
with her digging stick and a sack. 

"Well, Mink Woman wandered about on the 
warm grass and flower-covered plain, digging a 
mas here, one there, singing to herself, and think- 
ing how much she loved her Thunder Man, and 
wishing that he would be more often at home. 
He was away the greater part of the time. Thus 
wandering, in a low place in the plain she came 
upon a mas of enonnous size; actually, it was 
larger around than her body! *Ha! This is the 
mother mas; the one they told me not to dig up,' 
she cried, and walked around and around it, 
admiring its hugeness. 

"'I would like to dig it, but I must not,' she 
at last said to herself, and went on, seeking more 
mas of small size. But she could not forget the 

30 



The Thunder Medicine 

big one; she kept imagining how it would look 
out of the ground; on her back; in her lodge, all 
nicely cleaned and washed, a present for Thunder 
Man when he should return home. She went 
back to it, walked around it many times, went 
away from it, trying to do as she had been told. 
But when halfway home she could no longer 
resist the temptation : with a little cry she turned 
and never stopped running until she was beside 
it, and then she used the digging stick with all 
her strength, thrusting it into the ground around 
and around and around the huge growth and 
prying up, and at last it became loose, and seiz- 
ing it by its big top leaves, she pulled hard and 
tore it from the ground, and rolled it to one side 
of the hole. 

" What a big hole it was ! And light seemed to 
come up through it. She stepped to the edge 
and looked down: upon pulling up the huge 
mas she had torn a hole clear through the sky 
earth! She stooped and looked through it, and 
there, far, far below, saw — 

" Why, everything came back to her when she 
31 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

looked through It : There it was, her own earth 
land! There was the Two Medicine River, and 
there, just below the foot of its lower lake, was 
the camp of her people! She threw away her 
digging stick, and her sack of mas, and ran crying 
to camp and into Thunder Man's lodge. He 
was away at the time, but some of his relatives 
were in the lodge, and she cried out to them: 
*I have seen my own country; the camp of my 
people. I want to go back to them!' 

"Said Thunder Man's relatives to one an- 
other: ^She has found the big mas, and has 
pulled it up, and made a hole in our sky earth! 
Now, what shall we do.^ Thunder Man will be 
angry at us because we did not watch her more 
closely.' Thinking of what he might do to them 
in his anger, they trembled. They tried to soothe 
Mink Woman, but she would not be comforted; 
she kept crying and crying to be taken back to 
her father and mother. 

"Thunder Man came home in the evening, 
and upon learning what had happened, his dis- 
tress was as great as that of Mink Woman, whom 

32 



The Thunder Medicine 

he loved. When he came into the lodge she threw 
herself upon him, and with tears streaming from 
her eyes, begged him to take her back to her 
people. 

"^But don't you love me?' he asked. 'Have 
n't you been happy here? Is n't this a beautiful 
— a rich country?' 

"'Of course I love you! I have been happy 
here! This is a good country! But oh, I want to 
see my father and mother!' 

"'Well, sleep now. In the morning you will 
likely feel that you are glad to be here, instead of 
down on the people's earth,' Thunder Man told 
her. But she would not sleep; she cried all night; 
would not eat in the morning, and kept on crying 
for her people. 

"Then said Thunder Man: 'I cannot bear to 
see — to hear such distress. Because I love her, 
she shall have her way. Go, you hunters, kill 
buffalo, kill many of them, and bring in the 
hides. And you, all you women, take the hides 
and cut them into long, strong strips and tie 
them together.' 

33 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"This the hunters and the women did, and 
Thunder Man himself made a long, high-sided 
basket of a buffalo bull's hide and willow sticks. 
This and the long, long one-strand rope of 
buffalo hide were taken to the hole that Mink 
Woman had torn in the sky earth, and then 
Thunder Man brought her to the place and laid 
her carefully in the basket, which he had lined 
with soft robes : 'Because I love you so dearly, 
I am going to let you down to your people,' he 
told her. 'But we do not part forever. Tell your 
father that I shall soon visit him, and give him 
presents. I know that I did wrong, taking you 
from him without his consent. Say to him that 
I will make amends for that.' 

" 'Oh, you are good, and I love you more than 
ever. But I must, I must see my people; I can- 
not rest until I do,' Mink Woman told him, and 
kissed him. 

"The people then swung the woman in the 
basket down into the hole she had torn in the 
earth, and began to pay out the long rope, and 
slowly, little by little, the woman, looking up, 

34 



The Thunder Medicine 

saw that she was leaving the land of the sky gods. 
Below, the people, looking up, saw what they 
thought was a strange bird slowly floating down 
toward them from the sky. But after a long 
time they knew that it was not a bird. Nothing 
like it had ever been seen. It was coming down 
straight toward the center of the big camp. 
Men, women, children, they all fled to the edge 
of the timber, the dogs close at their heels, and 
from the shelter of thick brush watched this 
strange, descending object. It was a long, long 
time coming down, twirling this way, that way, 
and swaying in the wind, but finally it touched 
the ground in the very center of the camp circle, 
and they saw a woman rise up and step out of it. 
They recognized her: Mink Woman! And as 
they rushed out from the timber to greet her, 
the basket which had held her began to ascend 
and soon disappeared in the far blue of the 

sky. 

"All the rest of that day and far into the 
night, Mink Woman told her parents and her 
people about the sky gods and the sky earth, 

35 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

and even then did not tell it all. Days were 
required for the telling of all that she had seen 
and done. 

"Not long after Mink Woman's return to the 
earth and her people, Thunder Man came to the 
camp. He came quietly. One evening the door 
curtain of Lame Bull's lodge was thrust aside, 
and some one entered. Mink Woman, looking 
up from where she sat, saw that it was her sky 
god husband. He was plainly dressed, and bore 
a bundle in his arms: 'Father!' she cried; 'here 
he is, my Thunder Man!' And Lame Bull, 
moving to one side of the couch, made him 
welcome. 

"Said Thunder Man: ^I wronged you by 
taking your daughter without your permission. 
I come now to make amends for that. I have 
here in this bundle a sacred pipe; my Thunder 
pipe. I give it to you, and will teach you how 
to use It, and how to say the prayers and sing 
the songs that go with it.' 

"Said Lame Bull to this man, his sky god 
son-in-law, 'I was very angry at you, but as the 

36 



The Thunder Medicine 

snow melts when the black winds ^ blow, so has 
my anger gone from my heart. I take your 
present. I shall be glad to learn the sacred songs 
and prayers.' 

"Thunder Man remained for some time, 
nearly a moon, there in Lame Bull's lodge, and 
taught the chief the ceremony of the medicine 
pipe until he knew it thoroughly in its every part. 
^It is a powerful medicine,' Thunder Man told 
him. ' It will make the sick well ; bring you and 
your people long life and happiness and plenty, 
and success to your parties who go to war.' 

"And as he said it was, so it proved to be, a 
most powerful medicine for the good of the 
people. 

*," Thunder Man's departure from the camp 
was sudden and unexpected. One evening he 
was sitting beside Mink Woman in Lame Bull's 
lodge, and all at once straightened up, looke(f 
skyward through the smoke hole, and appeared 
to be listening to something. The people there 

^ The " Chinook " wind. It is generally accompanied by- 
dense black clouds that obscure the mountains. 

37 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

in the lodge held their breath and listened also, 
and could hear nothing but the chirping of the 
crickets in the grass outside. But Thunder Man 
soon cried out: 'They are calling me! I have to 
go ! I shall return to you as soon as I can finish 
my work ! ' And with that he ran from the lodge 
and was gone. And Mink Woman wept. 

"Who can know the ways of the gods? Surely 
not us of the earth. Thunder Man promised 
to return soon, but moons passed, two winters 
passed, and he came not to Lame Bull's lodge 
and his woman. But soon after he left so sud- 
denly. Crow Man returned from far wanderings 
and heard all the story of the god and Mink 
Woman. He made no remark about it, but 
spent much time in Lame Bull's lodge. Then, 
after many moons had passed, he said to the 
chief one day : 'Do you remember what you once 
promised me? When your daughter so sud- 
denly disappeared you promised that if I would 
even find her, or tell you whither she had gone, 
you would give her to me when she was found. 
Well, here she is: fulfill your promise!' 

38 



The Thunder Medicine 

"'But she IS no longer mine to give. She now 
belongs to Thunder Man/ the chief objected. 

"'Let me tell you this,' said Crow Man: 
'You promised to give her to me if I would even 
tell you where she had gone. I did that. And 
now, as to this Thunder Man, he will never 
return here because he knows that I am in the 
camp, and he fears me. So you might as well give 
me your daughter now, as you will anyhow later.' 

" 'Ask her if she will marry you. I agree to 
whatever she chooses to do,' Lame Bull an- 
swered. 

"Crow Man went outside and found Mink 
Woman tanning a buffalo robe: 'I have your 
father's consent to ask you to marry me. I hope 
that you will say yes. I love you dearly. I will 
be good to you,' he told her. 

"Mink Woman shook her head: 'I am al- 
ready married. My man will soon be coming 
for me,' she answered. 

" ' But if he does n't come, will you marry 
me?' Crow Man asked. 

"'We will talk about that later. I will say 
39 



I 

Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

now, though, that I like you very much. I have 
always liked you,' she replied. 

"More moons passed, and as each one came, 
Crow Man never failed to ask Mink Woman to 
marry him. She kept refusing to do so. But 
after two winters had gone by, and Thunder 
Man still failed to appear and claim her, why, 
her refusals became faint, and fainter, until, 
finally, she would do no more than shake her 
head when asked the great question. Then, at 
last, in the Falling Leaves moon of the second 
summer, when Crow Man asked her again, and 
she only shook her head, he took her hand and 
raised her up and drew her to him and whis- 
pered: 'You know now that that sky god is 
never coming for you. And you know in your 
heart that you have learned to love me. Come, 
you are now my woman. Let us go to my lodge, 
my lodge which is now your lodge.' 

"And without a word of objection Mink 
Woman went with him. Ai! She went gladly! 
She was lonely, and she had for some time loved 
him, although she would not acknowledge it. 

40 



The Thunder Medicine 

" It was a good winter. Buffalo were plentiful 
near camp all through it, and Crow Man kept 
the lodge well supplied with fat cow meat. He 
and Mink Woman were very happy. Then came 
spring, and one day, in new green grass time, 
Thunder Man was heard approaching camp, 
and the people went wild with fear; they be- 
lieved that he would destroy them all as soon 
as he learned that Mink Woman had married 
Crow Man. They all crowded around his lodge, 
begging him to give her up, to send her at once 
back to her father's lodge. 

"But Crow Man only laughed: *I will show 
you what I can do to that sky god,' he told 
them, and got out his medicines and called 
Cold-Maker to come to his aid. By this time 
Thunder Man was come almost to camp; was 
making a terrible noise just overhead. But Cold- 
Maker came quickly, came in a whirling storm 
of wind and snow. Thunder Man raged,- shoot- 
ing lightning, making thunder that shook the 
earth. Cold-Maker made the wind blow harder 
and harder, so that some of the lodges went 

41 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

down before it, and he caused the snow to swirl 
so thickly that the day became almost as dark 
as night. For a long time the two fought, light- 
ning against cold, thunder against snow, and 
little by little Cold-Maker drove Thunder Man 
back : he could not face the cold, and at last he 
fled and his mutterings died away in the dis- 
tance. He was gone! 

"* There! I told you I could drive him away,' 
said Crow Man. 'Mink Woman, you people all, 
rest easy: Thunder Man will never again at- 
tempt to enter this camp.' And with that he 
told Cold-Maker that he could return to his 
Far North home. He went, taking with him his 
wind and storm. The sun came out, the people 
set up their flattened lodges, and all were once 
more happy. 

"And Lame Bull, he retained the pipe, and 
found that its medicine was as strong as ever. 
And from him it had been handed down from 
father to son and father to son to this day, and 
still it is strong medicine. 

"Kyi! That was the way of it." 



II 

PU-NAK-IK-SI (CuTBANK) 

July 1 8. 

DOWN came our lodges this morning, and 
to-night we are camped in Cutbank 
Canyon, just below the great beaver 
ponds some six or seven miles from the head of 
the stream. When I first saw these ponds, years 
and years ago, they were dotted with beaver 
houses, and at dusk one could see the busy wood- 
cutters swimming from them in all directions to 
get their evening meal of willow or quaking 
aspen bark, preparatory to beginning their 
nightly work of storing food for winter use. I 
never killed a beaver, but I have torn down 
beaver dams in order to watch the little animals 
repair them. Beavers have a language as well as 
men : there was always a chief engineer who told 
the workers just what to do, and he himself 
rectified their mistakes. 

43 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

We are encamped right on the main war road 
of the Blackfeet into the country of the West 
Side tribes. Once, when camped here with the 
Small Robes (I-nuk'-siks), the band, or gens, of 
which I was a member, I saw a party of our 
young men make their preparations and start 
westward on a raid. They gathered in a sweat 
lodge with an old medicine man, who prayed 
earnestly for their success while he sprinkled the 
hot rocks with water, and dense steam filled the 
place. And at dusk, carrying in painted raw- 
hide cylinders their war finery, and in little sacks 
their extra moccasins, awl and sinew for repairs, 
and their little paint bags, they stole out in 
single file from the camp and headed for the 
summit of the range. 

Every evening, during their absence, the old 
medicine man rode all through the camp, shaking 
his medicine rattles, singing the song for the 
absent, calling over and over each one's name, 
and praying for his safe return. 

And then, one morning some two weeks later, 
they came into camp with a rush, driving before 

44 



The Old War Road 

them sixty or seventy horses that they had 
taken from the Kootenais. And two carried a 
slender wand from which dangled a scalp. They 
came in singing the song of victory; and then 
the war chief shouted: "A multitude of the 
enemy are on our trail. Break camp, you women, 
and move down river. Take your weapons, you 
men, and turn back with us!" 

We took our weapons. We mounted our 
horses and rode like mad up the old war trail, 
and within a half -hour sighted the enemy, forty 
or fifty of them, strung out in a long, straggling 
line, according to the strength and speed of each 
one's horse. We exchanged a few shots with the 
lead riders; one fell; the rest took their back 
trail, and how they did go up the steep incline 
to the summit, and over it. We did not pursue 
them: "Let them go!" Bear Chief shouted. "We 
have many of their horses; we have scalped 
three of them; let them go!" 

We "let them go!" and, indeed, that was the 
wiser way : they could have made a stand at the 
summit and shot us down as fast as we came on. 

45 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

The old war road! How many of my people 
have traveled over it, some of them never to 
return. It was along this road that Pitamakan, 
virgin woman warrior, led her warriors in what 
was to be her last raid! But how many, many 
times our people have come rushing homeward 
over it, singing their songs of victory, waving 
the scalps they have taken, and driving before 
them great bands of the horses of the Pend 
d'Oreilles, the Snakes, the Nez Perces, and other 
tribes of the Columbia River watershed. 

The names the Blackfeet have given to the 
four world directions are most significant of their 
entry into this Missouri River country. North is 
ap-ut'-o-sohts: back, or behind direction. South, 
ahm-ska'-pohts, is ahead direction. East is pi-na'- 
pohts: down-river direction; and west is ah-me'- 
tohts: up-river direction. I have told why the 
Two Medicine was so named, when the Black- 
feet came into the country from the Far North, 
and drove the Crows before them. This river 
they named Pu-nak'-ik-si (Cutbank), because 
its narrow valley for a long way up from its 

46 



An Old Woman's Bravery 

junction with the Two Medicine is walled in by 
straight-cut cliffs. 

The Cutbank River Valley, like those of all 
the other streams of the country, has been the 
scene of many a fight between the Blackfeet 
and their enemies, in which the Blackfeet were 
generally the victors. A remarkable instance of 
an old woman's bravery occurred just below here 
some forty years ago. 

A few lodges of the Kut'-ai-im-iks, or Never 
Laughs band of the Blackfeet, in need of the 
skins of elk and bighorn for making "buckskin" 
for light clothing and moccasin tops, were here 
hunting, and one evening all the men gathered 
in old Running Crane's lodge for prayers with 
his beaver medicine. An old woman, named 
Muk-sin-ah'-ki (Angry Woman), was sitting in 
her lodge by herself because there had not been 
room for her in the crowded beaver medicine 
lodge. But she was listening to the distant sing- 
ing, and saying over the prayers at the proper 
time, her heart full of peace and love for the 
gods. 

47 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

As she sat there at the back of the lodge, she 
suddenly noticed that the doorway curtain in 
the upper part was being slowly pulled aside to 
the width of a hand, and in that small space an 
eye glared at her for a time, and then the curtain 
dropped back to place. 

"That was the eye of an enemy," she said to 
herself. Her heart throbbed painfully; and for 
the time her thoughts were confused. Then, 
suddenly, some one, perhaps the sun himself, 
told her to take courage. She took courage : she 
stole out of the lodge to see what that enemy 
was doing. There was a moon; bright starlight; 
the night was almost as light as day; and she 
had no more than left the lodge than she saw 
the man walking here, there, examining the 
buffalo runners, the best and swiftest horses of 
the people, all picketed close to the lodges of 
their owners. Whenever the man's back was 
toward her, she hurried her steps; got closer and 
closer to him; and then, suddenly, she sprang 
and seized him from behind and shouted; 
"Help! Help! I have seized an enemy!" 

48 



Mountain Chief and his Horses 

In the beaver medicine lodge the men heard 
her and came running to her reUef . She had the 
man down; he was struggling to rise; but the 
sun must have given her of his power : she held 
him firmly until they came, and they seized him, 
and White Antelope stabbed him to death. He 
was a Gros Ventre. 

HOW MOUNTAIN CHIEF FOUND HIS HORSES 

"Nephew, listen! Magic took place here in 
the long ago," said Yellow Wolf as we sat around 
his lodge fire this evening. 

"The Ah'-pai-tup-i ^ were hunting on this Cut- 
bank stream, every day or two moving nearer 
and nearer to the mountains. At one of their 
camping-places some distance below here. Moun- 
tain Chief lost his two fast buffalo runners, and 
although all the young men of the camp scat- 
tered out to look for them, they could not be 
found. Camp was moved nearer to the moun- 
tains, and after a few days moved again, this 

1 Ah'-pai-tup-i (Blood People). One of the twenty-four 
gentes of the Pi-kun'-i, or " Piegan " Blackfeet. 

49 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

time to this very place where we are now en- 
camped. 

"The loss of the two buffalo runners was all 
that Mountain Chief could think about. As 
they could not be found, he felt sure that some 
enemy had stolen them. 

"There was a Kootenai Indian visiting in 
camp, and one day he entered Mountain Chief's 
lodge, and said to him: *You are grieving about 
the loss of your two fast horses. Now, if you will 
do as I say, perhaps I can find them for you.' 

"'Whatever you ask, that shall be done,' 
Mountain Chief told him. 

"'First, then, you must give me a robe, a 
good bow, and a quiver of arrows,' said the 
Kootenai. 

"'They are yours; there they are: my own 
weapons, that robe. Take them when you want 
them,' said the chief. 

"'I will take them later,' said the Kootenai. 
'And now, call in your leading men.' 

"Mountain Chief went outside and shouted 
the names of the men he wanted: a medicine 

50 



Mountain Chief and his Horses 

man; several old, wise men; some warriors of 
great name. They came and were given seats in 
his lodge, each man according to his standing in 
the tribe. Said the Kootenai then: 'I have a 
sacred song that I want you all to learn. I will 
sing it over three or four times, then you sing it 
with me.' 

"He sang the song. It was low in tone, and 
slow; a strange and beautiful song that gripped 
one's heart. But it was not hard to learn; after 
the Kootenai had sung it over four times, all 
there could sing it with him. 

"Then the Kootenai told Mountain Chief to 
have the women build for him a little lodge there 
inside the big lodge. This they did by leaning 
the sticks of two tripods against one of the poles 
of the lodge, their lower ends making a half- 
circle, and then covering them with buffalo 
leather. Into this little enclosure crept the 
Kootenai, taking with him a bird wing-bone 
whistle, and a medicine rattle, and as soon as 
he was inside he ordered the women to smooth 
down carefully the leather coverings so that he 

51 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

would be in the dark. He then said to the 
people, sitting there in the big lodge: 'We will 
now sing the song four times. It is a call song 
to all living things : the birds, the animals, the 
trees, the rocks — yes, even they have life. All 
will come when we sing this song, and we will 
question them as to the whereabouts of the two 
missing horses.' 

"They sang the song four times, and then the 
Kootenai, alone in his dark little lodge, sang 
another song, keeping time to it with his rattle, 
and the people, listening, heard outside the sigh- 
ing of the wind through a big pine tree, although 
no such tree was near; and the Kootenai ques- 
tioned the pine tree, and it answered that it had 
no knowledge of the missing horses. 

"Then, at his summons, came the different 
birds and the animals; one could hear outside 
the flutter of their wings, the tread of their feet; 
and the Kootenai questioned them, and one by 
one they answered that they had not seen the 
horses. Came then a big rock, hurtling down 
through the sky and through the smoke hole of 

52 




STREAM FROM UNNAMED GLACIER POURING INTO CUTBANK CANON 



Mountain Chief and his Horses 

the lodge right into the fireplace, scattering 
ashes and coals all around the lodge, and fright- 
ening the people sitting there. And the Koot- 
enai questioned it, and it answered that it knew 
nothing of the lost horses. 

"'Let us sing the sacred song again,' the 
Kootenai called out from his dark little lodge, 
and the people sang it with him, not once, but 
four times. The Kootenai then blew his whistle 
four times, four long, loud whistles. At the time 
there was no wind, but soon they heard, far off, 
the roar of an approaching wind of terrible force. 
Said the Kootenai then: 'I have called him, he 
is coming, Old-Man-of-the-Winds : be not afraid; 
he will not harm you.' 

"He came with dreadful whirlwinds of his 
making. Winds that shook the lodge, and made 
the lodge ears hum with the noise of that of a 
hundred swarms of bees. And then, suddenly, 
the wind fell, and outside the people heard this 
wind god ask : * Why have you sung — why have 
you whistled for me — what is it you want to 
know?' 

53 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"The Kootenai answered: 'Mountain Chief, 
here, has lost his two best horses. Fast buffalo 
runners they are; both black; one with a white 
spot on his side. I called you to ask if you have 
seen them anywhere?' 

"'No, I have not seen them,' Old-Man-of-the 
Winds answered. 'As you know, I belong on the 
west side of this Backbone-of-the-World. It is 
from there that I start the winds that blow over 
your country. I have been no farther out than 
here. No, I have not seen the horses.' 

"'Now I am depressed,' the Kootenai ex- 
claimed. 'I did not expect to learn much about 
this from the birds, the animals, trees, and rocks, 
even the bumblebee could tell me nothing; but 
I felt that you would surely know where the 
two horses are!' 

"'Well, I have a friend who can tell you what 
you want to know,' said Old-Man-of-the-Winds. 
'He is Red-Top Plume. He lives in the clouds; 
he can see the whole country; undoubtedly he 
can tell you where those horses are.' 

"'He is a stranger to me. How shall I find 
54 



Mountain Chief and his Horses 

him — this Red-Top Plume?' the Kootenai 
asked; and all the people held their breath, 
waiting to hear the answer. Here was sacred 
talk; talk of a man with a god, and about gods: 
they could hardly believe that it was real, that 
which they were hearing. 

"Answered Old-Man-of-the-Winds : 'Watch 
the clouds. When you see one of them turning 
from white to red, as the sun goes down to his 
lodge on his island in the great sea, you will 
know that Red-Top Plume is there above you. 
That red cloud is his plume. Yes, when you see 
that, sing your song again four times; blow your 
whistle again four times, and he will answer you.' 

"And with that the wind suddenly started to 
blow from the east, and Old-Man-of-the-Winds 
went with it back to his western home, and they 
heard him no more. 

"From his dark little lodge in the big lodge, 
the Kootenai called out to Mountain Chief: 'Go, 
stand outside your lodge, watch for a cloud 
turning red, and when you see it, come inside and 
tell me that it is there above us.' 

55 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

, "Mountain Chief went outside. He looked up 
and saw but a few small, white, slowly drifting 
clouds in the sky. There were four of them 
straight above him. These drifted toward one 
another, and he cried out: *A sign! A sacred 
sign! Four small clouds are getting together to 
make one large cloud!' 

"And at that all the people in the lodge cried 
out: 'The sacred number! Oh, sun! Oh, Above 
People all! Pity us! Pity us all! Allow us to 
survive all dangers! Give us long life and hap- 
piness!' 

"And then, as the sun was setting. Mountain 
Chief cried out: 'The four are now one large 
cloud, and its edge is beginning to turn red ! Ai ! 
The red, the sacred color, spreads over it!' 

"His voice trembled. Himself, he trembled; 
for he knew that he was looking — not at an 
ordinary cloud, but at Red-Top Plume himself, 
the great cloud god! 

"'Come in! Come in!' the Kootenai cried to 
him. And he went back into the lodge and 
joined in the singing of the sacred song. Four 

56 



Mountain Chief and his Horses 

times they sang it, oh, how earnestly! The 
Kootenai then blew his wing-bone whistle four 
times. Followed a silence; the people scarcely 
daring to breathe. And then they heard outside, 
in a deep and beautiful voice: 'I am Red-Top 
Plume! Why have you called me here.^' 

"'Red-Top Plume! God of the clouds! Pity 
us!' the Kootenai answered. * It is a matter of 
horses; of two fast buffalo runners; both black; 
one with a white spot on its side. We have lost 
them. Have you — oh, have you seen them any- 
where ? ' 

"'That is a small thing to call me down 
about,' the sky god answered; 'but, since I am 
here, I will tell you what I know: Yes, I have 
seen them. I saw them just now as I came down 
to earth. They are standing beside the spring 
just up the hill from where you camped when 
you lost them.' 

"'Ah! Ah! Ah!' the people exclaimed in 
hushed voices. And the Kootenai, questioner of 
gods and unafraid, cried out: 'Red-Top Plume! 
Sacred plumed god of the clouds! You are good 

57 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

to us. Tell us, now, what we can do for you — 
what sacrifice to do ? ' 

"But he got no answer. Red-Top Plume had 
gone — gone back to his home in the sky, and 
the people, rushing out from the lodge, looked 
up and saw him moving slowly eastward, his 
beautiful plumes redder than ever. And while 
the Kootenai and Mountain Chief and the other 
warriors made sacrifice to him, some young men 
mounted their horses and rode back to the camp- 
ing-place where the two horses had been lost, and 
lo! they found them near the spring where Red- 
Top Plume had told that they were standing." 

July 22. 

Even in my day the many beaver dams in this 
wide canyon were in good repair, and the ponds 
were dotted with inhabited beaver lodges. There 
are few of the little woodcutters here now, but in 
time to come, under the sure protection of the 
supervisor of this Glacier National Park, they 
will become as numerous as they were before the 
white man came. 

^8 



White Fur and his Beaver Clan 

Talk about beavers tonight brought out a 
most interesting story by Tail-Feathers-Coming- 
over-the-Hill. Said he: "Beavers build a great 
dam, often working moons and moons to com- 
plete it. Then, when it is finished, and a great 
pond created, they build their lodges in the 
backed-up water, and cut their winter supply 
of Cottonwood, willow, and quaking aspen, which 
they tow out in convenient lengths and sink in 
deep water around the lodges. 

"Now, after a few winters, they have to move 
on and build another dam-and-pond, for they will 
have used up all the available trees and willows 
around the first pond. But that is still their pond, 
the clan that built it, and in time, when a new 
growth of food trees has sprung up around it, they 
return there, repair the dam, build new lodges, 
and remain as long as the young trees last." 

WHITE FUR AND HIS BEAVER CLAN 

"Away back in the ancient days, when our 
first fathers were able to talk with the animals, 
a beaver chief named White Fur, with his family 

59 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

and his relatives, built a big dam on this river. 
You can still see the remains of it, willow-grown, 
and it still backs up some water, a pond as large 
in extent as the camp of our tribe. But in the 
old days that dam extended from one side to 
the other of the valley, and the water it backed 
up was more than a pond : it was a small lake. 
Above here, there Is a swift stream of white 
water rushing down the north side of the valley 
from great ice banks in the mountains. Well, 
just below its junction with the river is where 
White Fur built the dam. 

"Time passed. The sons of other beaver 
clans came and married the daughters of White 
Fur's clan, and took them off, and the sons of 
his clan went out and found wives and brought 
them home. The clan increased; the pond be- 
came full of lodges ; the trees were cut in greater 
number each succeeding summer. So it was that, 
when the ice went out one spring, White Fur 
went around and around the pond, examining 
the remaining food trees, and saw that there re- 
mained only a few more than enough for the 

60 




THE BEAVER DAM 



White Fur and his Beaver Clan 

coming winter. It was no more than he expected; 
his last hurried look around, just before the 
freeze-up in the fall, had warned him that the 
food supply was getting small. 

"He went home, and called a council, told 
what he had learned on his round, and then 
said : — 

" ' We must move out from here as soon as the 
ice breaks up next spring, and when we go we 
must know just where we are going; we cannot 
afford to lose time hunting for a good place to 
make a new home. Now, who will start out on 
discovery?' 

"'I will!' his eldest son. Loud Slap, first an- 
swered. He was so named because he could 
tail-slap the water louder than any one else in 
the whole gens. 

"Now, Loud Slap was White Fur's favorite 
son, and next to himself the best, the wisest 
dam-builder in the gens. The chief wanted to 
keep him at home, for going on discovery was 
very dangerous. But for very shame he could 
not order him to remain and let some other take 

6i 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

the risk. So, with sinking heart, he said: 'You 
spoke up first, my son, so you shall be the first 
one to look for a new home for us. I have had a 
dream, and I want you to find out if it told me 
truth: Go down this river a little way beyond 
the edge of the pines, look north, and you will 
see a big ridge with a low gap in it. Go up 
through that gap, and down the other side, and 
you will soon come to a small branch of a good- 
sized stream; look at all the branches of that 
stream for a good home for us, and come back 
and tell us all about it. Make that crossing 
through the gap in the daytime, for then the 
most of our enemies, the mountain lion, the 
fisher and the wolverine, the wolf and the 
coyote, are generally asleep. Night is the time 
that they do their murdering work.' 

"*As you say, so I will do,' Loud Slap an- 
swered. 

"And the nextmorning, some time before day- 
light, he started down river on his dangerous 
trail of discovery. Below his pond there were 
other ponds; and as he swam through them 

62 



White Fur and his Beaver Clan 

many of the beavers living in them asked him 
where he was going. 

"'Out on discovery; our food trees will last 
us only this coming winter; we have to find a 
new home,' he answered them all. 

"On he went, through the last of the ponds, 
down the river, swimming fast, so very fast that 
his big webbed hind feet, swiftly kicking, made 
the water foam past his breast. He had started 
out too early; when he passed the last of the 
pines, daylight was still some timeoif, so he dived 
under a pile of driftwood, then crawled up into 
it, found a good resting-place on one of the logs 
and went to sleep, sure that none of the prowlers 
could reach him there. 

"The sun. shining down through the little 
openings in the driftwood pile awakened him. 
He slipped down into the water, made a dive, 
and came up out in the middle of the river. 
Near by was a high, sloping bank bare of trees 
and brush; he swam to shore, climbed it, looked 
north, and saw the big ridge and the big, low 
gap in it. He looked all around; no animals were 

63 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

in sight except a few elk, and he knew that they 
would not harm him : he began waddling toward 
the gap. 

"The sun was hot. Loud Slap's legs were 
short; his body fat and heavy; there was no 
water; he soon became very tired and thirsty, 
and the top of the gap seemed to be a long way 
off. More and more often he had to stop and 
rest, but he kept saying to himself: 'I will not 
give up ! I will not give up ! ' — and at last he 
arrived at the top of the gap. Close up to the 
top on the other side were thick, cool groves of 
quaking aspen and willows; as far as he could 
see, the valley below him and its far side was 
one green growth of trees, and he knew that 
somewhere down there was water, plenty of it. 
Down he went, oh, how easily, on the steeper 
places just pushing a little with his hind feet and 
sliding along on his belly. He soon came to a 
small stream of running water and drank and 
drank of it, rolled over and over in its shallow- 
ness until wet all over, and then he followed it 
down. Other little streams came into it, and at 

64 



White Fur and his Beaver Clan 

last it became so deep that he could swim. After 
a time he came to where this stream joined a 
much larger one, and he turned and went up it, 
and away up in the timber found where a dam 
could be built that would form a very large pond, 
and best of all the quaking aspens and willows 
were everywhere there growing so closely to- 
gether that they formed a food supply that 
would last a number of winters. 

"That night Loud Slap slept in a hole that 
he dug in a bank of the stream. This is the one 
which we long ago named Ki-nuk'-si Is-si-sak'-ta. 
I understand that the white people have another 
name for it.^ 

"Early next morning Loud Slap came out of 
his hole, cut down a small quaking aspen, and 
ate all he wanted of its bark. He then swam 
down the stream, turned up its little fork, and 
before the sun was very high left it and took his 
back trail up through the gap, and before noon 
was going down the long slope to Cutbank River. 

1 Kl-nuk'-si Is-si-sak'-ta (Little River). By the whites 
named Milk River. 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

The going was easy. But one thing troubled him : 
the risk that he ran traveling there in that open, 
waterless country. Whenever he came to a 
patch of buck brush or a clump of tall grass, he 
would sit up and look all around to see if any 
enemy was near; and then he would go on, keep- 
ing as close to the ground as possible. Twice he 
saw a coyote in the distance, and sat motionless 
until the animal moved on out of sight. And 
then, when almost to the river, sitting up and 
looking out from a brush patch, he saw a wol- 
verine coming straight toward him. He trem- 
bled; he shivered. 'Now is my end come!' he 
said to himself, and imagined how it was going 
to feel to be bitten and clawed and torn to 
death. Because of his helplessness, because he 
could in no way defend himself, he wept; but 
silently. 

"On came the wolverine, sniffing the ground; 
sniffing the rocks; the weed growths; and once, 
when he turned and looked back, Loud Slap 
threw himself flat there in the brush; he had not 
dared move before. The wind was from the 

66 



White Fur and his Beaver Clan 

southwest; the wolverine was coming from the 
west, and that was one thing in Loud Slap's 
favor. But on which side of that patch of brush 
would he pass? If to the north, then he would 
scent the beaver-odor trail, follow it, and all 
would be over. If he passed to the south of the 
patch, and not too close, then all would be well. 
From where he lay, flat on the ground in the 
brush. Loud Slap could see nothing but the brush 
stems in front of his nose; but presently he 
heard, close to the patch and to the west of it, 
the sniff! sniff! sniffle! of his enemy. He closed 
his eyes; his body shook with fear; he could al- 
most feel strong, sharp-fanged jaws closing upon 
his neck! The suspense was terribly hard to 
bear! And then, after what seemed to be a whole 
moon of time, he heard the sniffling close in front 
of him; then faint and fainter off in the direction 
of the river; and presently he opened his eyes, 
little by little rose up, and looked out from his 
hiding-place. Lo! Wolverine had come close, 
close to the brush patch, and south of it, and 
then had turned, and was now walking slowly 

67 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

toward the river! 'My enemy passes ! I survive!' 
Loud Slap said to himself, and would have sung 
had he dared. Oh, yes, beavers sang in those 
days, as you shall learn. 

" Loud Slap watched the wolverine go on down 
the valley, and then waddled to the river as 
fast as he could work his legs. How good it felt, 
that plunge into the cool water from the bank! 
and, once into it, he made it foam as he swam 
homeward against the swift current. Long be- 
fore night he climbed the dam of the upper pond, 
and a little later entered his father's lodge. 'Ha! 
Back so soon! What found you, my son?' old 
White Fur asked. 

"'A fine stream there on the other side of the 
gap. A place to dam a large pond. Plenty of food 
bark trees,' Loud Slap answered, and then told 
carefully all about the place, and about his nar- 
row escape from the wolverine. Then his mother 
went swimming from lodge to lodge of the gens, 
calling all the heads of the families, and when 
they had gathered in White Fur's lodge he told 
again of his find and of the dangers of the trail. 

68 



White Fur and his Beaver Clan 

All went home pleased that he had found such 
a good place for a new home for them. 

"White Fur and his whole gens worked very 
hard that summer to get in sufficient food bark 
sticks for the winter supply. They had to drag 
the last of them a long way to water, and they 
kept at it long after the snow came, and until 
the ice and cold weather prevented further cut- 
ting. The trails they left in the snow, just be- 
fore the pond froze over, were a sure call to their 
passing enemies, and they halted and lay in 
wait beside them, and killed in all five of the 
members of the gens, one of them Loud Slap's 
oldest son. A lynx was seen to spring upon him 
and carry him off, as he was going out to finish 
cutting down a large tree. 

"The winter passed. When spring came, there 
was still considerable food bark untouched on 
the underwater piles, but, oh, how glad the 
beavers were to be able to swim about again, 
and eat fresh bark from living tree branches. 
All were anxious to start at once for the new 
home across the ridge, but White Fur would not 

69 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

permit it. From the pressure of the winter 
snows the dead grass of the past summer lay 
flat: 'We must wait until the new grass grows 
high enough to conceal us,' he said, ' and then we 
will go.' 

"Of course, he meant those that would be able 
to go: females with newborn young were to re- 
main where they were until the young should be 
old enough to travel, and then they were to 
cross the ridge and join their mates. The new 
grass came, and when it was a little higher than 
the top of a beaver's back, old White Fur and 
Loud Slap led all those who could go, about 
fifty of them, down the river on the way to the 
stream beyond the gap. White Fur had already 
talked with the chief who lived in the next pond 
below, and he had promised to keep all new- 
comers from occupying the pond that White 
Fur and his gens were leaving for a time. 

"The travelers saw no enemy on the trail up 
through the gap, and, upon arriving at the place 
that Loud Slap had discovered, were well pleased 
with it. That very evening, after a heavy 

70 



White Fur and his Beaver Clan 

meal of bark, they began work on the dam, and 
by morning had much willow brush laid, butts 
to the current, across the stream. Night and 
day, with little rest, they toiled to complete the 
dam, of sticks and stones and sod and earth, 
and within two moons' time they finished it, 
and had a pond large enough and deep enough 
for the lodges of the gens, and all the food sticks 
they would need to sink for winter use. Then, 
one evening, came those who had been left be- 
hind, came with their strong and half-grown 
young, and all began at once to cut and bring 
in and sink the winter food supply. Long before 
winter set in they had stored more than they 
could possibly use, and from that time until the 
ice formed they did nothing more than strengthen 
the dam, and eat and sleep, and play about in 
the water. 

"The winter passed, and more young were 
born. Came and went another winter, and in 
the spring more young were born. There were 
now in the gens many two, and three, and some 
four-year-olds, both male and female, and they 

71 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

could not mate with one another; something had 
to be done for them. Old White Fur called a 
council, and there was much talk about it. Some 
favored sending scouts away down the Little 
River to learn if there were any beaver colonies 
along it. Others, and the greater number, de- 
clared that the unmarried males should take the 
trail through the gap down to Cutbank River, 
find mates in the different gens having ponds 
along it, and tell the unmarried males there to 
come over and take wives from White Fur's 
gens. It was decided that this should be done, 
and one morning more than forty young males 
started for Cutbank River. 

"Days passed; and yet more days, and no 
wife-seeking beavers came to the pond on Little 
River. 'Something is wrong,' White Fur told 
Loud Slap. 

"'^z7 Something is wrong. If none come 
within four days' time, I shall go over to the 
Cutbank ponds and learn what the trouble is.' 

"The four days passed, and no stranger, not 
one, came. On the fifth morning Loud Slap once 

72 



White Fur and his Beaver Clan 

more took the trail for Cutbank, saying to White 
Fur as he left, 'If I do not return within four 
days' time, then send some one over to learn 
what the trouble is, for I shall be dead.' 

"Down the river went Loud Slap, and up the 
little fork, and thence along the trail through 
the gap in the ridge. He moved along very cau- 
tiously, keeping a sharp lookout in all directions, 
and seeing nothing to alarm him. After passing 
through the gap he saw, on a ridge to the east, a 
number of wolves following a small band of 
buifalo, and that pleased him, for, seeking food 
there, they would not be likely to turn and cross 
his trail. He hurried on down the slope. 

"Suddenly, when near the river, a whirl of 
wind brought a dreadful odor to his nostrils; an 
odor of dead and decaying flesh. He stopped, 
sat up, looked sharply ahead, saw nothing to 
alarm him, went on a short distance, and came 
upon a scene that made him shiver; that made 
him mourn : there, on the trail and on both sides 
of it, lay his youthful kin who had gone out to 
seek wives ! There they lay, their bodies swollen 

73 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

and bursting, every one of them mangled and 
torn, several half eaten by their enemies, wolves 
probably, that had discovered and killed them 
all! One look at them was enough; he hurried 
on, weeping, and plunged into the river. 

"Upstream he went, faster than he had ever 
swam before, and soon entered the lower one 
of the beaver ponds. Straight to the chief's 
lodge he swam, and dived down to the entrance, 
and went up into the big and comfortable grass- 
floored home. 

"'Ha! Loud Slap! It is you! Welcome you 
are! Sit youth and give us the news!' the chief 
cried out. 

"Loud Slap greeted him and gave the news, 
and both wept over the death of so many of their 
kind. The chief's wife went out and spread the 
news, and there was mourning in every lodge in 
that pond. 

"The chief then gave Loud Slap bad news. 
Said he: 'In the early part of this moon came 
to us a visitor from the big pond at the head of 
the lake on the next stream south of this river.' 

74 



White Fur and his Beaver Clan 

He meant, of course, the great beaver pond just 
above Lower Two Medicine Lake. 
"*Yes?' said Loud Slap, — 'yes?' 
"'Ah! He came and visited us and our kin 
in the other ponds, and gave no reason for his 
coming, and soon went home. But in a few 
days' time he returned with all his gens, and 
they are many, and took possession of the upper 
pond, your pond, and at this time they are re- 
pairing the dam and backing the water up into 
the new growth of food trees, which are as thick 
as they can stand. We told him, we all told him, 
this chief, — Strong Dam is his name, — that he 
should not take the pond, as it belongs to you, 
to your father. White Fur, and his gens. But 
he said that he did not care who owned it, he 
had taken it, and would hold it, fight for it 
against all comers.' 

"'Ha! Is it so!' Loud Slap cried. 'We will 
see about that! Say nothing to any one that I 
have been here. Tell your people to keep my 
visit secret from all above here. I go to bring my 
kindred over, and we will drive that Strong 

75 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

Dam and his gens back whence they came, or 
kill them all.' 

"Loud Slap went back to his Little River 
home the next day, and told all that he had seen 
and learned. All mourned and mourned for their 
dead, and their hearts burned with anger against 
Strong Dam and his gens. Said White Fur: 'I 
am old, old. But I can still fight! We will go 
over to our pond to-morrow. I will lead you, 
and we will teach that Strong Dam and his rela- 
tives something; we will send them crying back 
to their pond above the lake!' 

"They started the next morning, all the males, 
and even females that were without young; and 
they were many, those who were waiting for 
males of other gentes to come and marry them. 
Old White Fur led them across to the river with- 
out mishap, and up to the first pond, where they 
visited, and rested, and ate their fill of fresh, 
green bark. And there som^e of the females met 
young unmarried males who wanted to mate 
with them; and they answered, 'We will marry 
you, but first you must fight for us; you must 

76 



White Fur and his Beaver Clan 

help us drive that Strong Dam and his gens 
from our pond.' 

"'And is that all you ask?' they replied. 'We 
are only too glad to help you. Who would not 
fight for his sweetheart should not have one!' 

"This gave White Fur something to think 
about; and after a time he said to Loud Slap: 
'Go, now, on a secret mission : visit the ponds of 
our friends above here, and say to the unmar- 
ried males that our young females here will 
marry them, but they must first help us drive 
Strong Dam from this river.' 

"'Ai! That is a good plan,' said Loud Slap; 
and he started at once to carry it out. Late that 
night he returned, and reported that all the young 
males had agreed to the proposal, and would join 
White Fur and his kin when they came along. 

"'Let us start now,' said White Fur; and the 
advance began, and by the time he reached the 
dam of his own old pond, he had a large following. 

"There was a young man lying there on the 
dam, a far-back ancestor of ours who had gone 
there to get his medicine dream; his vision. He 

77 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

was awake; and when, in the bright moonhght, 
he saw that big, old, white-furred beaver come 
up on the dam, and a hundred and more beaver 
following, he could not believe his eyes, and 
cried out: 'Am I really and truly awake, or is 
this a medicine vision ? ' 

"'Hush! Keep still,' old White Fur told him. 
* What you see is real. We are come to fight and 
drive off those here who have stolen our pond 
and our new growth of food trees. Just you keep 
still : we want to surprise them. If you see that 
they are beating us, then give us help. When all 
is over, I will give you a medicine that will insure 
you long life and happiness.' 

"The young man — No Otter was his name — 
made signs that he would keep quiet. And he 
sat there and watched more than a hundred 
beavers cross the dam close in front of him, and 
slide quietly into the pond, and even then could 
hardly believe that he was not dreaming. 

"As they entered the water that great war 
party of beavers swam out in all directions for 
the shores of the pond, where, scattered all along, 

78 



White Fur and his Beaver Clan 

Strong Dam and his kin were already cutting 
the young trees for winter food. And as he 
watched and Hstened, the young man heard 
suddenly a great commotion and squealing all 
along the shore : the fighting had begun. Then, 
almost at once, the attacked and the attackers 
took to the water, and the whole surface of the 
pond was as if it had been struck by a tornado. 
It boiled, and eddied, and foamed, and shot high 
in spray, and with it all was the slap ! slap ! slap ! 
of beaver tails as the animals struggled and 
clinched, and floundered and bit, all over its 
long length and width. And soon beavers, 
frightened and gasping for breath, and bleeding 
from many wounds, began to pass on each side 
of the young man over the dam, and drop into 
the stream below and disappear in its swift cur- 
rent. And some, unable to climb it, and bleeding 
from many wounds, died there at the edge of the 
dam and sank. The water was red with their 
blood. One of them, crawling out, staggered 
right up against the young man, and gasped, and 
died, and he put out his hand and felt of it, its 

79 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

wet coat, the warm but now breathless body, 
and then for the first time was he sure that what 
he was witnessing was real, and no dream. 

"The fight was over. The last of the enemy- 
had been killed, or had fled down river, and 
White Fur and his party gathered on the dam. 
Not all were there: some of them lay dead on 
the bottom of the pond or sorely wounded on 
the shore. White Fur directed that they should 
be helped into the cool lodges, where they would 
be safe from the prowlers, and there cared for 
and fed. That done, said White Fur to the 
young man: *You have seen a great sight this 
night. Had we needed your help I know that 
you would have given it.' 

"'Yes, you had but to call, and I would have 
been with you,' the young man answered. 

"'I know it,' said White Fur, 'and just for 
your good-will I shall give you a strong medi- 
cine, and teach you the songs that go with it. 
But I cannot do this here; you will have to go 
home with us, to our pond on the next stream 
to the north.' 

80 



White Fur and his Beaver Clan 

"They went there the next day, leaving be- 
hind the newly married females and their mates 
to care for the wounded and make them well. 
And on the way up through the gap and down to 
the pond, White Fur and Loud Slap told the 
young man the story of their lives and their 
troubles, just as I am telling it to you. And 
upon reaching the pond on Little River, No 
Otter remained there a long time with the bea- 
vers, the old chief and his son. Loud Slap, giving 
' him a medicine beaver cutting and teaching him 
the beaver songs. It was a good medicine. He 
took it home with him, and kept it, and made 
ceremony with it, and sang the songs as he had 
been taught to do, and because of that he had 
great success at war, and in curing the sick, and 
he lived to great age. 

"Kyi! So ends my story." 

July 25. 
Yesterday Guardipe, or, as I prefer to call 
him, Ai-is-an-ah-mak-an (Takes-Gun-Ahead), 
climbed with me to the top of White Calf Moun- 

81 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

tain. There, on the extreme summit of the 
rough crested mountain, we came upon five big- 
horn, all ewes, and not one of them with a lamb 
beside her. During the lambing season here this 
year there was a continuous downpour of rain 
and sleet and snow, in which the newborn young 
undoubtedly perished. 

But how tame those five ewes were! We 
walked to within fifty yards of them, and they 
gazed at us curiously, now and then nervously 
stamping the rock with one or the other of their 
fore feet. And then they circled around us, 
twice, and finally walked off toward the eastern 
point of the mountain, often stopping to look 
back at us, and finally disappeared behind some 
rock piles. 

At the same time Kut'-ai-ko-pak-i (No-Cow- 
ard-Woman — as my people have named my 
wife) was having her own experience with the 

game in this Park. With Miss L , a Boston 

friend, she was sitting near the edge of a high, 
almost cutbank at the edge of the river, when she 
heard the slow, heavy, twig-snapping tread of an 

g2 



An Escape from a Grizzly 

animal back in the brush. She gave her friend a 
nudge, and pointed in the direction of the sounds, 
and the two watched and Hstened. And presently 
they saw the brush shaking as the animal forced 
its way through it, and then, half revealed and 
half concealed in more open brush, they saw a 
big grizzly coming straight toward them ! Right 
near where they sat a dwarf juniper grew at the 
edge of the high bank, several of its limbs over- 
hanging it. Without speaking a word, and 
trembling as though they had ague, they crept 
to the tree, grasped one of the limbs, and tena- 
ciously gripping it let themselves down over the 
edge of the bank. And then — the limb broke 
with a loud snap and down they went along the 
gravelly incline, so steep that they could get no 
foothold, over and over, head first, feet first, and 
sideways, and landed in the river with a loud 
splash. But they did not mind that: what were 
bruises and a wetting compared to being mauled 
by a grizzly? They forded the waist-deep stream 
and arrived dripping but safe in camp, and were 
glad to be there! 

83 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

Although this Glacier National Park is only 
five years old, the game animals within it have 
already become very tame. The bighorn and the 
Rocky Mountain goats no longer flee from parties 
traversing the mountain trails, and the deer and 
elk and moose have become almost as fearless as 
they are. As for the bears, they are continually 
trying to break into the meat-houses of the dif- 
ferent camps. Undoubtedly these mountains 
and forests within the next ten years will fairly 
be alive with game. And as to trout, the supply 
is increasing instead of decreasing. In this Cut- 
bank stream alone there have been caught this 
season in the neighborhood of two thousand 
trout, weighing from a fourth of a pound up to 
four pounds, but since the ist of April seventy 
thousand young trout, from the Anaconda hatch- 
ery, have been put into it. 

July 27. 
Last night, in Black Bull's lodge, we had more 
tales of the long ago in this Cutbank Valley. 
Would that I had the time to collect all the 

84 




CUTBANK RIVER. A GOOD TROUT RIFFLE 



The Story of the Bad Wife 

Blackfeet legends of the various places in their 
once enormous domain. From the Saskatchewan 
to the Yellowstone, and from the Rockies be- 
tween these two streams, eastward for about 
three hundred miles, there are tales of adventure, 
of camp-life, and wonderful legends, for every 
mountain, stream, butte, and spring within that 
great area. Said Black Bull last night: — 

"I will tell you a story that my grandfather 
told me. It happened in the days of his fathers' 
boyhood, and it is called 

'*THE STORY OF THE BAD WIFE 

"One summer in that time the people, having 
made new lodges, moved up here on Cutbank 
River to cut new lodge poles, and to gather 
weasel-eyes,^ which grew in great quantities back 
on the high mountain slopes. 

"At that time one of the best-liked young men 
of the tribe was Falling Bear. He was a very 
brave and successful warrior, and very kind- 
hearted : he took it upon himself to keep three or 

^ Ap-ah a-wap-spi. Weasel-eyes: huckleberries, 

8s 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

four old widows and several old and helpless men 
supplied with all the meat and skins they could 
use, and even gave them gentle horses for pack- 
ing and riding whenever camp was moved. At 
the time the people moved up here on Cutbank, 
he had been married but a short time. He had 
fallen in love with Otter Woman, the most beau- 
tiful girl in the tribe, and with her father's and 
mother's consent, and to their great joy and 
pride, had set up with her a lodge of his own. 
No word had been so much as whispered against 
Otter Woman; she was believed to be as good 
and pure as she was beautiful of face and 
form. 

"The tribe had not been here many days when 
Falling Bear decided to go to war. Many of the 
warriors, some of them much older than he, 
wanted to go with him, but he told them all that 
this time, because of a dream, a vision he had, 
he would take no one but his woman. He made 
full preparation for the war trail, had a sacred 
sweat with an old medicine man, who was to 
pray for him during his absence, and then, with 

86 



The Story of the Bad Wife 

his woman, he took the Cutbank trail for the 
country of the West Side tribes, all of them 
enemies of the Blackfeet. 

"Traveling with great caution, and only at 
night, he passed through the country of the 
Flatheads, and came to the plains country of the 
Nez Perces. There he struck the trail of a big 
hunting party of people, and followed it, and 
soon found that he was gaining upon them; one 
early morning he came upon their camping-place 
which they must have left on the previous after- 
noon, for in some of the fireplaces there were still 
live coals deep down in the ashes. 

"Now, on the night before he had lost his 
tobacco, and his desire to smoke was strong 
within him. So he said to his woman, 'You go 
around on that side of the big camping-place and 
examine every lodge site for tobacco leavings, 
and I will search this side for it.' They parted 
and began their quest. 

"The camp had been pitched partly in an 
open, grassy park, and partly in the timber sur- 
rounding it; and because of that Falling Bear and 

ay 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

his woman were often out of sight of each other. 
At one of these times Otter Woman was examin- 
ing a lodge site and fireplace back in the timber, 
and, happening to look off to one side, she saw 
hanging on some brush a fine shield, some beau- 
tiful war clothes, and a large fringed and painted 
medicine pouch. She well knew that these had 
been spread out to sun by the campers and for- 
gotten, and that some one would be coming back 
for them, and was about to go after Falling Bear 
to come and take them when she heard the 
tread of an approaching horse. So near was it 
that she had not time to run and hide. She stood 
still, staring, and almost at once there came in 
sight, on a black-and-white pinto horse, the 
handsomest young man that she had ever seen. 
He was so handsome that to look at him gave 
her a yearning pain in the heart for him. Just 
one look, and she had fallen in love with him ! 
She didn't want to fall in love with him; she 
just could n't help it! 

"He, this Nez Perce, checked up his horse and 
sat quiet, staring down at her, and no doubt 

88 



The Story of the Bad Wife 

thought her the handsomest woman he had ever 
seen. Suddenly she began making signs to him. 
What a wonderful thing that silent language is ! 
All the tribes of the plains know it. Just by the 
use of their hands they can express their every 
thought to one another. 

" Signed she : 'My man is over there! Be quiet. 
I will go to him, somehow get his weapons from 
him, then hold him. You come quickly when I 
cry out, and kill him, and I will go with you; will 
be your woman.' 

"Of course, nothing could have pleased the 
Nez Perce more than that. To kill an enemy 
and take his beautiful woman, what a big coup 
that would be! He signed to the woman that 
what she proposed was good, and slid from his 
horse and tied it to a tree, then signed to her to 
go, and he would follow, keeping out of sight. 

"The woman crossed the big camping-ground 
and found her man: 'I have made a great find,' 
she told him. 'On some bushes over there are 
hanging beautiful war clothes, a shield, weapons, 
and a medicine pouch. Leave you your weapons 

89 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

and things here, and come with me, and take 
them.' 

"'But why should I leave my weapons? One 
should never be without them,' he objected. 

"* Because from here goes the trail we are to 
follow, and you will have all you can do to bring 
here what I have found,' she explained. 

" He did n't see any sense in leaving his wea- 
pons, but took her word and laid them down, 
along with his medicine pouch, and his war 
clothes in their parfleche (painted cylinder), and 
followed her out into the open park. 'The things 
are right across there in the brush,' she told 
him, pointing to the place, and then gradually 
dropped back to his side, and then a step behind 
him. Then, as they came near the brush on the 
far side, she suddenly seized him, endeavoring 
to squeeze his arms close to his side, so that he 
could not use them, and at the same time she 
called out to the Nez Perce to come to her assist- 
ance. He had been watching, and was already 
coming as fast as he could run. 

" Falling Bear, of course, saw at once the inten- 
90 



The Story of the Bad Wife 

tions of the two, and as quick as a flash of light- 
ning made up his mind what to do. He only half 
struggled with the woman, now grasping his neck 
with one hand and arm, and beating his eyes 
and face with the other hand. She was fast 
blinding him, but he stood the pain of it imtil the 
Nez Perce, with war club raised, was but a step 
or two away. He then broke loose from the 
woman, kicked backward, his foot striking her 
in the stomach and knocking her over, and then 
he sprang at the Nez Perce, seized the arm and 
hand that held the war club high, and struggled 
with the man for possession of it. He wrenched 
it away from him, and with it struck him a hard 
blow on the head, and he fell, his skull crushed 
in, and died. The victor scalped him with his 
ovm. knife, took his war club and his bow and 
arrows, and then turned to the woman. 

''She lay where she had fallen, trembling at 
what she had done, wishing that she had not 
done it. 'Get up. If you spoke truth, if there 
are war clothes and other things over there, lead 
me to them,' Falling Bear told her. 

91 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

" She arose, still trembling, but now with some 
hope that he was not going to kill her, and led 
him to the place. His eyes were swelling shut so 
fast that one was entirely closed, but he could 
partly use the other. He looked at the things 
there on the brush: *Ah! Here are the war 
clothes, the shield, the medicine pouch, but 
where are the weapons?' he asked. 

"The woman did not answer. What could she 
say? There had been no weapons left on the 
brush. Falling Bear laughed a laugh that made 
her shiver, and told her to gather up all that was 
there and follow him. He unfastened the horse 
and led it across the camping-place, she follow- 
ing, and he had her take up his own weapons and 
things and fasten them to the saddle. He then 
mounted the horse, and told her to lead it and 
take the back trail home. Before he had ridden 
far his other eye closed; he was, for the time, 
wholly blind; but not afraid. He kept close pos- 
session of all the weapons, and made the woman 
do everything that he wanted done. She minded 
his every word. 

92 



The Story of the Bad Wife 

"Traveling again at night, and hiding in the 
brush during the daytime, the two passed safely 
through the country of the Flatheads, and 
crossed the mountains. On the morning that 
they approached the camp here on Cutbank, 
Falling Bear had partly recovered the use of one 
eye. The other was still swollen shut; it seemed 
to have been poisoned by the woman's finger- 
nails. 

"When so near the camp that they could 
plainly see the lodges, Falling Bear told the 
woman to go on in and tell her relatives to come 
to him ; that he would await them right where he 
was. They soon came out to him, his father-in- 
law and his brother-in-law, and when they saw 
his scarred face and swollen eyes, they cried out: 
'Oh, what has happened to you.^ Have you been 
in a fight with a mountain lion ^ ' 

"'Worse than that,' he answered; 'this was 
done to me by the one I most loved and trusted.' 
And then he told them all about it, and con- 
cluded by giving them the horse and all the 
things that he had taken from the Nez Perce. 

93 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"When he finished his awful tale the two 
men, listening closely, were so overcome with 
shame and grief that for a time they could not 
speak. But at last Falling Bear's father-in-law 
said: *I have made up my mind what to do. 
Come ! Let us go on into camp.' 

"They went in; Falling Bear to his own lodge 
— in which his father and mother lived. His 
woman was not there; she had gone to her 
father's lodge. He was glad that she had gone 
there; he never wanted to see her again. His 
father asked him to give the story of his war 
trail, and he answered that he had nothing to 
say. He was so sick at heart that he could not 
talk. 

"Arrived in his own lodge, and finding his 
daughter. Otter Woman, there. Falling Bear's 
father-in-law told her to go out for a time; and 
when she was gone he told her mother all that 
she had done, and then, calling in their son, the 
three agreed upon the way the bad wife should 
be punished. They called her in and told her to 
braid her hair nicely, and to put on her best 

94 



The Story of the Bad Wife 

clothes. And while she was doing that, her 
father and mother and brother painted their 
faces black and let down their hair. 

"As soon as Otter Woman was dressed, her 
father said to her: 'We will now go outside, and 
you will mount the Nez Perce horse. I will lead 
it, your mother and brother will follow, and we 
will go all through the camp, stopping here and 
there to tell the people all about the great wrong 
you did your man.' 

"'Oh, no, no! Not that!' Otter Woman cried. 
* I am ashamed enough as it is ! I am sorry that 
I did it! I don't know how I came to do it; I 
shall never, never do such a thing again!' 

"'You spoke the truth there,' said her father. 
*No, you will never do it again!' And he ordered 
her to go out ahead of them and mount the horse. 
She did so and sat upon it, head cast down, 
looking neither to the right nor left nor ahead: 
shame was with her. Holding the horse's rope, 
the old man shouted: 'Listen, people, listen.' 
And when a crowd had gathered he told them 
what his daughter had done to her good man, 

95 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

and the people groaned with shame that one of 
their tribe could be so bad of heart. Some even 
wept at the horror of it. 

"From one part of the camp to another the 
old man led the little procession, stopping often 
to tell the shameful story, until all knew it. 
And then at last he led the horse out into the 
center of the great circle of the lodges, and told 
his daughter to dismount. She did so, and, 
drawing his knife, he stabbed her in the heart 
and she fell and died. Said he then to his wife: 
*Get women to help you; drag that body far off 
and leave it, and never let me hear again the 
name of her who was once my daughter!' 

"And the women did as he said. Never again did 
any one mention Otter Woman in his presence." 

"Ai! A sad story! A story to give one bad 
dreams ! Let us have one of more cheerful nature 
before we go to bed," said Stabs-by-Mistake. 

"An Old Man story, then," said Two Guns. 
"All are laughable." 

"Elder brother, tell us the story of Old 

96 




BLACK BULL AND STABS-BY-MISTAKE (right) NEAR LOWER 
END OF CUTBANK CANON 



Old Man 

Man and the woman," said Black Bull to Tail- 
Feather s-Coming-over-the-Hill . 

"Ai! That I will," the chief answered. 

But before I set down the story, I must explain 
Old Man. 

Old Man (Nap'-i) was the god who created 
the world, and all life upon it, and he was the god 
of the Blackfeet until, some centuries back, they 
got from some southern tribe another religion, of 
which the sun is the principal god. However, 
they still pray to Old Man, as well as to the gods 
of the later religion, although in time a great 
many stories have grown up about Old Man 
that make him appear to be more of a buffoon 
than a god. An interesting point about the word 
ndp-i is, that, while it is the term for an old man, 
its real meaning is dawn, or the first faint, white 
light that gives birth to the day. And so, in 
common with the ancient Mexicans, various 
tribes of the plains, the Aryans and other ancient 
races of the Old World, the original religion of 
the Blackfeet was the worship of light personi- 
fied. 

97 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

Let us have now, the old chief's story of 

OLD MAN AND THE WOMAN 

"Having created the world, the animals, grass, 
trees, all life upon it. Old Man realized that by 
having men live by themselves, and women by 
themselves, he had made a mistake. He saw that 
they should live together. The camps of the two 
sexes were far apart : the women were living here 
at the foot of the mountains, in Cutbank Valley, 
and the men were away down on Two Medicine 
River. Each camp had a buffalo trap, and sub- 
sisted wholly upon the buffalo that were de- 
coyed into it. 

"As I have said. Old Man saw that he had 
made a mistake in keeping men and women 
apart. In fact, he found that he himself 
wanted a woman; so he went to the men and 
said: 'You shall no longer live by yourselves. 
Come ! We will go up to the camp of the women, 
and each of us get one of them.' 

"The men were more than glad to do that; it 
was what they had been hoping to do for a long 

98 



Old Man and the Woman 

time; so they hurried to put on their best clothes, 
and neatly braided their hair, and then started 
off with Old Man for the women's camp. When 
they came in sight of it, Old Man told them to 
stop right there, and he would go ahead and 
plan with the women just what should be done. 
They sat down, and he went on to the women's 
camp. Himself, he had on his old, soiled clothes; 
his fine clothes he had left back with the men. 

"Arrived in the camp, he found only two or 
three women there; the woman chief and all the 
others were down at the buffalo trap, butchering 
the animals that they had that morning decoyed 
into it. When he told the few women that he 
found why he had come, he greatly excited and 
pleased them, and they started at once to run 
and tell the others to hurry up from the trap 
and meet the men. 

"'But wait. Not so fast. I want a word with 
you,' Old Man called out; and when they came 
back to him, he asked: 'What kind of a woman 
is your chief?' 

"'Everything that is good, and kind and 
99 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

brave, that is our chief,' one answered. And 
another said: 'Ai! She is all that, and more; 
and she is the most beautiful woman of us all ! ' 

"This pleased Old Man. He said to himself, 
'That is the woman for me. I must have her.' 
And to the waiting women he said: 'It is right 
that chief woman should mate with chief man. 
You women are to come to us, and each select 
the man you want. Now, tell your chief woman 
that the chief man is brave and kind and hand- 
some, and that she shall select him for her man. 
She will know him by the way he is dressed. 
He wears buckskin shirt and leggings, embroi- 
dered with porcupine quills, and a cow-leather 
robe with a big porcupine-quill embroidered sun 
in the center of it. You tell her to take him for 
her man!' 

"'We will do so!' the women cried, and 
started off for the buffalo trap as fast as they 
could run. 

"Old Man hurried back to the waiting men, 
and hurriedly put on his fine clothes, the ones 
that he had described to the women. 

I GO 



Old Man and the Woman 

"Trembling with excitement, and out of 
breath from their long, swift run, Old Man's 
messengers arrived at the buffalo trap and told 
their wonderful news, — that men had come to 
marry them; that each woman was to choose the 
man that she thought would best suit her. The 
butchering of the animals ceased at once, and 
the women started for their camp to put on 
their good clothes and recomb their hair. They 
wanted to appear as neat and clean and well 
dressed as possible, before the men. Yes, all ran 
for their camp, all except the chief woman. 
Said she: 'I cannot leave here until I finish 
skinning this spotted medicine calf. Go, all of 
you, and I will join you as soon as I can.' 

"The work took more time than she thought 
would be required, and when she arrived in 
camp with the valuable skin, she found all the 
other women dressed and impatient to go and 
choose their men. 'Oh, well, it does n't matter 
how I look,' she said. 'I am chief; I have a name; 
I can go choose my man dressed just as I am. 
How did you say the man chief is dressed?' 



lOI 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"They told her again what he wore, according 
to what the messenger man had told them, and 
she said : ' I '11 choose him. Chief, I suppose, must 
mate with chief.' 

"And so she went right on with the others, 
wearing her butchering dress, all stiff with blood 
and grease from the neck down to the bottom 
of the skirt; and her moccasins were even more 
foul than the skirt. Her hands were caked with 
dried blood, and her hair was not even braided. 

"Their chief leading, the women approached 
the waiting men, all of them standing in a line, 
and singing a song of greeting. Old Man stood 
at the head of the line, very straight and proud, 
and of fine appearance in his beautiful new por- 
cupine-embroidered clothes. By these the chief 
woman recognized him from afar, and said to 
herself: 'He is a fine looking man. I hope that 
he will prove to be as good of heart as he is good 
to look at.' And, leading her women, she walked 
straight up to him and laid a hand on his arm: 
'I will take you for my man,' she told him. 

"But Old Man shrank back, his face plainly 

I02 



Old Man and the Woman 

showing his loathing of such a bloody and greasy, 
wild-haired woman. 

"'I take you for my man,' the woman chief 
repeated ; and then he broke away from her hold 
and ran behind his men: 'No! No! I do not want 
you, bloody, greasy woman,' he cried, and went 
still farther off behind his men. 

"The woman chief turned to her followers: 
'Go back! Go back to that little hill and there 
wait for me,' she told them. And to the men she 
said, 'Remain where you are until I return. I 
shall not be gone long.' And with that she turned 
and hurried to her camp. Her women went to 
the hill. The men remained where they were. 

"Down at her camp the chief woman took off 
her old clothes and bathed in the river. Then 
she put on her fine clothes, a pair of new moc- 
casins, braided her hair, scented herself with 
sweetgrass, and returned to her women. She 
was now better dressed than any of them, and 
they had told Old Man the truth when they 
said that she was beautiful of face and form: 
she was the most beautiful woman of them all. 

103 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"Again she led her women to the line of wait- 
ing men. Again Old Man stood first, stood at 
the head of them. But she passed him by, as 
though she did not see him, and he, with a little 
cry, ran after her, took her by the arm, and 
said: 'You are the woman for me. I am the 
chief of the men: you must take me!' 

" She turned upon him, and her eyes were like 
fire. She tore his hand from her arm, and cried : 
* Never touch me again, good-for-nothing, proud- 
and-useless man. I would die before I would 
mate with you.' 

"And to her women she said: 'Do not, any of 
you, take him for your man.' And with that she 
turned and chose a man. The others then, one 
by one, took their choice of the men. When all 
had chosen, there was one woman who had no 
man; all had been taken except Old Man. She 
would not have him, and became the second wife 
of one of the men. The choosing over, all started 
for the women's camp. Old Man, now very sad- 
hearted, was for following them; but the chief 
woman turned and motioned him off. 'Go away. 

104 



The Backbone-of-the- World 

There is no food for you, no place for you in our 
camp/ she told him; and he went away, crying, 
by himself. 

"And that is what Old Man got for being so 
proud." 

July 30. 
We break camp and move northward to-mor- 
row. For the past two days some of us have 
been riding about on this "Backbone-of-the- 
World," as the Blackfeet call the Rocky Moun- 
tains, and we have ridden our horses where, in 
former times, nothing but a bird could go. The 
Park Supervisor and his engineers and miners 
and sappers have blasted out trails over the high- 
est parts of the range, making it easy and safe for 
tenderfeet tourists to view the wonders of this 
sub-Arctic, greater than Alpine range of moun- 
tains. One of the most impressive views is from 
the summit of the trail from Upper Two Medi- 
cine Lake to Cutbank River. The Dry Fork 
Trail, it is called. At its extreme height the trail 
is along a mountain crest about thirty feet in 

105 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

width. Mr. L. W. Hill graphically described 
the stretch the other day, when, after crossing 
it, he said : "On its east side one can spit straight 
down three thousand feet into a lake, and on 
the other side cast a stone that will go down 
much farther than that!" 

Indeed, the view of the mountains and cliffs 
and canyons from that height is so grand, so 
stupendous and impressive, that one cannot find 
words to describe it all. 

On another day we went over Cutbank Pass 
and down the west side of the range, far enough 
to get a good view of the Pumpelly Glacier, and 
see the huge ice blocks break from it and drop 
from a cliff more than two thousand feet in 
height. They strike the bottom of the canyon 
with a reverberating crash that can be heard 
for miles. Just below this glacier, down Nyack 
Creek three or four miles, is a fine alkaline 
spring and clay bed where, in other days, old 
Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill and I were 
wont to go for bighorn, goats, deer, and elk. All 
these animals came to it in great numbers, and 

io6 




STABS-BY-MISTAKE, SUN-WOMAN, AND HER SON, LITTLE OTTER 
IN CUTBANK CANON 



The Names of the Mountains 

drank the waters, and ate great wads of the salty 
mud. We once killed a large grizzly there, whose 
late autumn coat was as black as that of a black 
bear. 

This afternoon we have had further talk about 
the naming of these mountains. For a wonder, 
the topographers have not taken away the orig- 
inal name for the outer mountain on the north 
side of this Cutbank Valley: we find on the 
map that it is still White Calf Mountain. It was 
named for one of the greatest chiefs the Montana 
Blackfeet ever had. As a young man, fresh from 
his first war trail, he witnessed the signing of the 
treaty between his people and the representa- 
tives of the United States, at the mouth of the 
Judith River, in 1855, so he must have been 
born in 1836 or 1837. As a warrior, his rise to 
fame was rapid, and many are the stories told 
of his indomitable bravery in facing the enemy. 
In later years, because of his great interest in 
the welfare of his people, he became their head 
chief. He died in Washington, in 1903, while 

there on tribal business. 

107 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

The right names of the other mountains wall- 
ing in this valley are as follows : The unnamed 
mountain next west from White Calf Mountain 
is Ahk'-sap-ah-ki (Generous Woman); Mount 
James is Ah -kow~to-mak-an (Double Runner) ; 
Mount Vorhis is O-nis-tai'-na (Wonderful Chief). 
The west one of the Twin Buttes is Little Plume; 
the east one is O-nis-tai'-mak-an (Wonderful 
Runner). And, as I have said, the outer moun- 
tain on the south side of the valley is Muk-sin-a' 
(Angry Woman). All but the last one were 
named for old-time great chiefs and warriors of 
my people, and we intend that they shall be so 
named on the official maps, even if we have to 
petition the House of Representatives and the 
Senate, in Washington, to make the change! 
And you, my readers, lovers of these grandest 
mountains of our country, will you not be with 
us in this perfectly proper request? 
i Said Takes-Gun-Ahead to me this afternoon : 
"Who are these white men, James, and Vorhis, 
for whom the mountains were named? Were 
they great warriors, or presidents, or wise men?" 

io8 



The Names of the Mountains 

I had to confess that I had never heard of 
them. 

"Huh!" he exclaimed. And "Huh!" all the 
others, even the women, echoed. 



Ill 

Ki-nuk'-si Is-si-sak'-ta (Little River) 

August 2. 

WE moved over here on Little River — 
or, as the whites have named it, Milk 
River — day before yesterday, and 
made camp at the lower edge of the great body 
of timber in which the stream has its source. 
We are here on the Blackfeet Indian Reserva- 
tion, and several miles from the boundary line of 
the Glacier National Park. The state game laws 
do not apply to the reservation, hence we have 
the right to hunt upon it when and where we 
please. 

Yesterday Takes-Gun-Ahead and I oiled our 
rifles and started out after meat. We went up 
the river, passing the old beaver dams that 
White Fur and Loud Slap built in the long ago, 
and presently, in the dense growth of pine, Cot- 
tonwood, and willow, came upon old and fresh 

no 




BIG SPRING PAINTING AUTOBIOGRAPHY ON THE FLESH SIDE 
OF A TANNED ELK-SKIN 



Killing a Moose 

tracks of deer and elk. We followed for a time 
the trail of four or five elk, and left it to take 
the very fresh trail of a moose. Takes-Gun- 
Ahead was in the lead, and within ten minutes 
he saw the animal not fifty yards away, standing 
partly concealed behind a clump of willows and 
watching our approach. Its head was in plain 
view, and he fired and struck it just at the base 
of the ear, and it fell, gave a convulsive kick or 
two, and was dead when we got to it. It was a 
three-year-old bull, and carried a very ordinary 
set of antlers, velvet-covered and still soft at the 
points. I dressed the carcass while my compan- 
ion went back for a horse, and before noon we 
had real meat — ni-tap '-i-wak-sin — in camp . We 
distributed it among the lodges, and there was 
great rejoicing. Later in the day, Two Guns 
and Black Bull brought in a fine buck mule 
deer, and at sunset Big Spring returned with the 
meat and skin of a yearling ram that he had 
killed on the outer point of Divide Mountain. 
It was like old times, — the camp red with meat, 

— and we all felt rich and happy. 

Ill 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

The killing of the moose in this particular 
place brought out a lot of reminiscences of hap- 
penings here on Little River in other days, 
and of them all I think that Takes-Gun-Ahead's 
story was the best. As the pipe went the first 
round after our feast of roast moose ribs in 
Black Bull's lodge, said he: "I will tell you the 
story of 

"old man and the wolves 
"One day in that long ago time. Old Man was 
wandering along the edge of this forest, having 
come over from Cutbank way. He was feeling 
very lonely, and wondering what he could do to 
have a more lively time, when, as he approached 
the river here, probably right where we are 
camped, he saw a band of six wolves sitting on 
the bank, watching him. He stopped short, 
watched them for a time, and then approached 
them, whining out: 'My younger brothers! My 
younger brothers! I am very lonely! Take pity 
on me: let me be a wolf with you!' 

"As I have said, the wolves were six: the old 

112 



Old Man and the Wolves 

father and mother, their two daughters, and 
their sons, Heavy Body and Long Body. The 
old father wolf answered Old Man. ^ Just what 
do you mean? ' he asked. ' Is it that you want me 
to change you into a wolf — that you want to 
live just as we do?' 

" ' I want to live with you, hunt with you,' he 
answered, 'but I don't want to be changed 
wholly into a wolf. Just make my head and neck 
to look like yours, and put wolf hair on my 
legs and arms, and that will be about enough 
of a change. I will keep my body just as it is.' 

"*Very well, we will do that for you,' said 
the old wolf; and he took a gray medicine and 
rubbed it on Old Man's head and neck and legs 
and arms, and made the change. 'There!' said 
he. 'My work is done. I would like to have made 
you all wolf, your body as well as the rest of you, 
but you will do as you are; you are quite wolf- 
like. And now, let me tell you something about 
our family. My old wife and I don't hunt much. 
Your two younger brothers there are the runners 
and killers, and their sisters help in the way of 

113 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

heading off and confusing the game. Your 
younger brother there, Long Body, is the swiftest 
runner, but he has n't the best of wind. How- 
ever, he generally overtakes and kills whatever 
he chases. Your other younger brother. Heavy 
Body, is not a fast runner, but he has great stay- 
ing power, never gets winded, and in the end 
brings down his game. And now you know 
them. Whenever you feel like hunting, one or 
the other of them, as you choose, will go with 
you.' 

"'You are very kind to me,' said Old Man. 
*I am now very tired, but to-morrow I shall want 
to hunt with one or the other of them.' 

" 'We are also tired; we have come a long way; 
It is best that we all rest during this night,' said 
the old wolf; and he led the way up to the top 
of a high ridge on the north side of the valley, 
where all lay down. 

"'But why rest out on top of this barren, 
windy place, instead of in the shelter of the tim- 
ber.^' Old Man asked, his teeth beginning to 

chatter from the cold. 

114 



Old Man and the Wolves 

"'We never rest in the timber,' the old wolf 
replied. 'There enemies would have a good 
chance to take us unawares. Here we can see 
afar everything that moves, and as one or an- 
other of us is always on watch, we can keep out 
of danger. Also, we can look down and see the 
different kinds of game, and make our plans to 
chase what we want, head it off, tire it out, and 
kill it. We always, summer and winter, do our 
resting and sleeping on high places.' 

"Before the night was far gone. Old Man be- 
came so cold that he trembled all over, and, try 
as he would, he could not keep his jaws together. 

"'You annoy us with your tremblings, and 
your teeth chatterings; you keep us from sleep- 
ing,' the old wolf complained. 

"'Well, I shall not annoy you long,' Old Man 
answered, 'because I shall soon freeze to death!' 

"The old wolf aroused his wife and children: 
'This tender-bodied elder brother of ours is 
freezing. I suppose we have to protect him. 
Lie down in a circle around him and cover him 
with your tails,' he told them. 

IIS 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"They did so, and he was soon overcome 
with heat: 'Take your ill-smelUng tails from my 
body; I am wet with perspiration!' he gasped. 
They removed their tails and he soon began to 
shiver. *Put them back! I freeze!' he cried; and 
they did as he commanded. During the night he 
had them cover him many times with their tails, 
and as many times remove them. He passed a 
miserable night, and so did the wolves, for he 
kept them from sleeping. 

"At break of day all arose, and, looking down 
into the valley, saw a lone, buck mule deer feed- 
ing farther and farther away from the timber. 
They made a plan for capturing it. They all 
sneaked around into the timber, and then Long 
Body and Old Man crept down the valley until 
the buck saw them and ran, and then they 
chased it. Long Body soon pulled it down, and 
Old Man came up in time to seize and break its 
neck, and felt very proud of himself. The other 
wolves soon came to the kill, and all feasted. 
The carcass lasted them two days. 

"Again and again they went to the top of the 
ii6 



Old Man and the Wolves 

ridge to pass the night, and Old Man soon be- 
came so used to the cold that he did not need 
tail covering. When the deer was eaten, they 
killed another one, and then a buffalo bull, 
which lasted them some days. Then, after two 
failures in chasing antelope and some hungry 
days. Long Body killed a big bull elk, just out- 
side the timber here. They were several days 
eating it, but at last all the meat and the soft 
bones were finished, and nothing but the back- 
bone and the hard leg bones remained. Said the 
old wolf then: 'We must be saving of what we 
have left, for it may be some time before we can 
make another killing. To-day we will take turns 
chewing the upper bone of a hind leg.' 

"They gathered in a small circle with one of 
the bones, noses to the center, and the old wolf 
said to Old Man: 'Now, while this chewing is 
going on, bone splinters are bound to fly. You 
must keep your eyes tight shut until it comes 
your turn to chew, else you may get a splinter 
that will blind you.' 

"Old Man did as he was told. The old wolf 
117 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

began the chewing, and after gnawing off the 
end of the bone, and getting a Httle of the mar- 
row, called out to his wife that it was her turn 
to chew and passed her the bone. And so from 
one to another it went around the circle until 
Long Body got it, and Old Man's turn came 
next. His curiosity now got the better of him: 
he just had to see what was going on, and slowly 
opened one eye, the one next to Long Body. 
All the wolves had their heads to the ground or 
resting on their fore paws, and all — even Long 
Body, busily chewing the bone— kept their eyes 
tight shut. 'Huh! This is a queer way to feast,' 
Old Man said to himself, and just then a splinter 
flew from the bone and struck his open eye, not 
putting it out, but causing him great pain and 
making him very angry. 'I will pay him for 
that ! ' he thought, and waited his turn at the bone, 
becoming more and more angry as he waited. 

" ' Your turn, Old Man,' said Long Body after 
a time, and passed him the bone. Old Man 
took it, chewed it for a time, looking sharply at 
all the wolves. All had their eyes tight shut, so, 

ii8 



Old Man and the Wolves 

raising the bone as high as he could, he brought 
it down with all the force of his arm upon Long 
Body's head and killed him. The other wolves, 
hearing his twitching, as he died, opened their 
eyes, saw him dead, and Old Man staring in 
horror at what he had done. 

"'Oh, what have you done! You have killed 
your younger brother ! ' the old wolf cried. 

"'I didn't mean to,' Old Man answered. 
'When he was chewing the bone he let a splinter 
fly, and it struck me in this eye. I meant to 
punish him a little for being so careless, but I 
did not mean to kill him. I must have struck 
harder than I thought to do.' 

"'You had your eyes open! It was your fault 
that you got the splinter!' the old wolf said; 
and then he and all the rest began grieving for 
their dead. 

"All the rest of that day, and all through the 
night, they howled and howled, and Old Man 
thought that he would go mad from the mourn- 
fulness of it all. He was very sorry — he hated 
himself for what he had done in his anger. 

119 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"The mourning- time over, the wolves dug a 
hole in the ground and buried Long Body, and 
then scolded Old Man. *Had you killed my son 
intentionally,' the old wolf concluded, 'we would 
have had your life in payment for his life. As it 
is, we will give you one more trial : see that such 
an accident as that never again occurs ! ' 

"'Younger brother,' said Old Man, 'I am 
grieving and very restless because of what I have 
done. I want to be moving; to be doing some- 
thing. Let Heavy Body go with me up in this 
pine forest, and we will try to kill something.' 

"The old wolf remained silent for some time, 
thinking, and at last answered: 'Yes, I will 
allow him to go with you, and remember this: 
if anything happens to him, we shall hold you 
responsible, and great will be your punishment!' 

"The two started off, and Old Man said to 
his partner, 'In some ways I am wiser than 
you. I have this to say, and you must heed it: 
Whatever you start after, be it deer or elk or 
moose, and no matter how close you may get to 
it, if it crosses a stream, even a little stream 



1 20 



Old Man and the Wolves 

that you can jump, stop right there and turn 
back. Mind, now, even if a few more leaps will 
get you to the animal's throat, you are not to 
make those leaps if it crosses a stream. Should 
you keep on, death in some form will get you.' 

"'How do you know this?' Heavy Body 
asked. 

"'I may not tell you all that I know,' Old 
Man replied. 'I have given you the warning; 
heed it.' 

"They went farther up in the timber, and 
after some nosing of trails started a big bull 
moose, and took after it, Heavy Body running 
far in the lead. He was fast gaining upon it, was 
almost at its heels, when it jumped into a wide, 
long pond, really a widening of the creek, and 
started swimming across it to an island, and 
from that to the other shore. Heavy Body 
thought of Old Man's warning, but said to him- 
self: 'He does n't know everything. I must have 
that moose!' And into the water he went and 
started swimming toward the island. And just 
as he was nearing it a water bear sprang from 

121 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

the shore, and killed him, and dragged him to 
land, and Old Man appeared at the edge of the 
pond just in time to see the bear and her two 
nearly grown young begin feasting upon her kill. 
With a heart full of rage and sorrow, he turned 
back into the timber and considered how he 
could revenge the death of Heavy Body. 

"Two mornings later, just before daylight, 
Old Man came again to the shore of the pond, 
and close to the edge of the water took his stand 
and gave himself the appearance of an old stump. 
Soon after sunrise the old water bear, coming 
out from the brush on the island, saw it, sat up 
and stared at it, and said to herself: 'I do not re- 
member having seen that stump before. I sus- 
picion that it is Old Man, come to do me harm. 
I saw him right there when I killed the wolf.' 

"She stared and stared at the stump, and at 
last called out her young, and said to one of 
them: 'Go across there and bite, and claw that 
stump. I believe that it is Old Man. If it is, he 
will cry out and run when you hurt him.' 
"The young bear swam across and went up 

122 



Old Man and the Wolves 

to the stump, and bit, and clawed it, and hurt 
Old Man. He was almost on the point of giving 
up and running away, when it left him and went 
back to the island and told the old one that the 
stump was a stump, and nothing else. But the 
old one was not satisfied. She sent the other 
young one over, and it bit and clawed Old Man 
harder than its brother had, but he stood the 
pain, bad as it was, and that young one went 
back and also said that the stump was just 
a common old stump and without life. 

" But the old water bear was not yet satisfied. 
She went across herself, and bit and tore at 
the stump with her claws, and what Old Man 
had suffered from the others was nothing com- 
pared to what he endured from her attack. He 
stood it, however, and at last, satisfied that her 
children had been right, that this was a stump 
and nothing else, she left it and started back for 
the island. Then it was that, just as she was 
entering the water. Old Man picked up the bow 
and arrows he had made during the two days 
back in the timber and shot an arrow into her, 

123 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

well back in the loin; but she dove under water 
so quickly that he could not see whether he had 
hit her or not. She swam under water clear 
around back of the island, and went ashore 
where he could not see her. He turned, then, and 
went away back in the timber, and slept all the 
rest of the day and all of the following night. 

"Early the next morning he was approaching 
the pond by way of the stream running from it, 
when he saw a kingfisher sitting on a limb of a 
tree overhanging the water, and looking intently 
down into it: 'Little brother, what do you 
there .^' he asked. 

"'The old water bear has been shot,' the bird 
answered. 'She bathes in the water, and clots of 
blood and pieces of fat escape from the wound, 
and when they come floating along here I seize 
them, and eat them.' 

"'Ha! So I did hit her!' Old Man said. 'How 
badly, I wonder.'*' 

"He went on up the shore of the stream, 
trying to think of some way to get complete 
revenge for the death of Heavy Body, when he 

124 



Old Man and the Wolves 

heard some one out in the brush chanting: 
'Some one has shot the old water bearl I have 
to doctor the old water bear! Some one has shot 
the old water bear! I have to doctor the old 
water bear!' 

"He went out to see who this might be, and 
found that it was the bull frog, jumping about 
and making the chant after every jump. He 
went to him and asked if the bear was much 
hurt? 

"'There is an arrow in her loin,' the frog an- 
swered, 'and as soon as I find a certain medicine 
plant, I shall pull the arrow out and apply the 
crushed plant to the wound. I believe that I can 
save her life.' 

"'That you never will,' Old Man said, and 
fired an arrow into him, and killed him. He then 
took his skin, put it on, tore up a handful of a 
green plant, and swam to the island. As soon as 
he reached the shore he began chanting as the 
frog had done : ' Some one has shot the old water 
bear! I have to doctor the old water bear!' And 
so, chanting and jumping, he followed a trail 

125 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

into the brush and came upon the old bear and 
her two young. She was lying on her side, breath- 
ing heavily, and her eyes were shut. Old Man 
bent over her, and, firmly grasping the arrow, 
shoved it in until it pierced her heart, and she 
gave a kick and died ! He then picked up a club 
and killed the two young. 'There! That ends 
the water bear family. I was crazy ever to have 
made her and her husband!' he exclaimed. 

"Casting off the frog skin now, he with great 
difficulty floated the three bears from the island 
to the shore of the pond. There, a short distance 
back from it, he found a bowl-shaped depression 
in the ground. Into this he dragged the carcasses 
of the bears, after skinning them and taking off 
all the fat from their meat and insides, and then 
he tried out the fat and poured the oil over them, 
completely covering them and filling the depres- 
sion. He then called the animals. *A11 you who 
would be fat, come bathe in this oil,' he shouted. 
And on all sides the animals heard and began to 
come in. The bears — real bears, the grizzly 
and the black — came first and rolled in the oil, 

126 



Old Man and the Wolves 

and ever since that time they have been the 
fattest of all animals. Then came the skunk; next 
the badger; after him the porcupine, and rolled 
in the oil and got fat. The beaver came and 
swam across the oil. All that part of him above 
the water as he swam — his head and the forward 
part of his back — got no fat, but all the rest 
of his body — his sides, belly, and tail — became 
extremely fat. Last of all the animals came the 
rabbit. He did not go into the oil, but, dipping a 
paw into it, rubbed it upon his back between his 
shoulders and upon the inside of each leg. That 
is why he has no fat on other parts of his body. 

"'Well, there!' Old Man exclaimed, after the 
rabbit had gone. *1 have done some good. I 
have avenged the death of my wolf partner and 
have made fat many of my younger brothers!' 
And with that he started off seeking more ad- 
ventures. 

"Kyi! My story ends." 

August 4. 

Not for many years, I am sure, have my rela- 
tives and friends here been so happy as they are 

127 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

just now. Instead of beef or no meat of any kind, 
as IS generally the case with them when at home, 
— some die every winter from want of food, — 
they have now in every lodge real meat; meat of 
moose and elk and bighorn, and so are living 
much as they did in the days before the white 
men overran their country and killed off their 
game. 

A happy heart sharpens one's wits. All day 
yesterday, as I knew, my two old relatives, Tail- 
Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill and Yellow Wolf, 
were considering what other one of the tribal 
stories about the Little River country would 
most please me. I had told them that I could 
not put them all down — could use only two or 
three of the most interesting ones. And so, when 
we all gathered in Yellow Wolfs lodge last 
evening, and the pipe was lighted and started 
on the round of our circle, he said that it had 
been decided that I should have the story 
of the rescue of a boy from the Crows, and 
that he would tell it. It was called, he said, the 
story of 

128 



New Robe, the Rescuer 

"new robe, the rescuer 

"In the long ago, before our forefathers had 
taken this country from the Crows, they were 
one summer camping and hunting on the Big 
River of the North. ^ Came the evening of a 
long, hot day, and a boy of eight or nine winters 
— Lone Star was his name — failed to return to 
his parents' lodge. The chiefs ordered the camp 
crier out, and he went all among the lodges, 
shouting the news, and asking if any one had 
seen the boy? None had; so then the chiefs 
ordered all the men and youths to go out and 
try to find him. All that moonlit night, and all 
the next day, they searched the surrounding 
country, but got no trace of him. Every alight- 
ing buzzard was marked down, but in every 
instance it was found to be feasting upon the 
remains of game that the hunters had killed. So 
then, although his body could not be found, most 
of the people believed that the boy was dead. 

1 Ap-ut'-o-sosts O'muk-at-ai (Big River of the North). 
The Saskatchewan. 

129 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

His beautiful sister, Red Cloud Woman, and his 
father. Black Bear, thought otherwise; they be- 
lieved that he had been stolen by the enemy, 
and publicly, all through the camp, the two 
went, the girl vowing that she would marry 
whoever would find her brother, the old man 
adding that she had his permission to make the 
vow. 

"There was in the camp a very poor young 
man, named New Robe. So poor was he that he 
had never owned a new robe, nor a new shirt, 
nor leggins, nor even new moccasins. His father 
and mother were dead, and always, as far back 
as he could remember, he had worn nothing but 
the used clothes the charitable had given him. 
He had never been to war, had never done any- 
thing to make a name for himself, but now he 
was eager to start in quest of the missing boy. 
He had long loved the girl, but had never even 
spoken to her. He now went to her and said : 
*Tell no one about it. Just silently pray for me. 
I am going to travel far in search of your 
brother.' 

130 



New Robe, the Rescuer 

"Said the girl: 'This is not a time for me to 
hide my heart from you. I have watched you, 
loved you for a very long time. But what could 
I say? Nothing. Well I knew that my people 
would not allow me to marry one so poor as you. 
But now there is hope for us; somehow I believe 
that this trouble is to be the means of bringing 
us together.' And with that she kissed him, and 
he went quietly out from camp, unobserved by 
any one, and started southward on his quest. 

''Many days later, in the valley of Old Man's 
River, New Robe came upon an old camp- 
ground of the enemy — Crows, of course, for 
that was then their country. From it he found 
that they had moved south, and he followed their 
trail, ever along the foot of the mountains, and 
knew that he was fast overtaking them. At the 
River-of-Many-Chiefs-Gatheringi ^^ found live 
coals in the ashes of their abandoned fireplaces, 
and so, upon arriving at the top of the ridge 
overlooking this stream, he was not surprised to 
see the lodges of the great Crow camp here — 
1 St. Mary's River. 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

right here where we are encamped tonight. 
They were set up in a great circle, and in the 
center of it was a huge lodge covered with old 
lodge skins : the Crows were having their medi- 
cine lodge ceremonies! 

"As soon as night came and before the moon 
arose, New Robe descended the hill and entered 
the camp. The people were all of them gathered 
at the medicine lodge, singing and dancing, and 
fulfilling their vows to the sun, so he went from 
one living lodge to another, looking into each for 
some sign of the missing boy. By the time he 
had made the round of the lodges of half of the 
circle it was midnight, and the people were be- 
ginning to go home to sleep. He left the camp 
and went back on the ridge, having found no 
trace of the one for whom he searched. 

"The next night New Robe descended the 
ridge and searched the lodges of the other half 
of the circle, and found not what he sought. 
When he had finished, the people were still 
gathered at the medicine lodge, and, desperate, 
and knowing well the great risk that he would 

132 



New Robe, the Rescuer 

incur, he went toward it, and stood at the outer 
edge of the great crowd and watched the cere- 
monial dancing of the different warrior clans. 
He kept his face partly concealed with his old 
robe, and moved from place to place around the 
outer circle of the people, and none observed 
him, so intent were they upon watching the 
dancers. 

"At last, during a quiet interval between 
dances, he imagined that he heard some one 
groaning, but, look where he would, he could see 
no one in distress, nor could he locate the exact 
place from which the groaning came. It was a 
light-voiced groaning, such as a child would 
make; he felt sure that it came from little Lone 
Star, somewhere in that great lodge, and in great 
pain. He left the place, went outside the circle 
of lodges, and lay down. 

"It was long past midnight when the people 
returned to their lodges. Then, as soon as the 
camp became quiet. New Robe returned to the 
medicine lodge, and, listening, heard faint groan- 
ing and located it. It came from the top of the 

^33 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

center post, where all the sacrifices to the sun 
were hung. He was sure then that it was no 
other than Lone Star up there, lashed to the 
post, a living sacrifice to the sun, and there to 
die! 

"Well he knew that there, within the lodge, 
were sleeping the women who had vowed to build 
the great structure in honor of the sun. And 
there, too, in his secret, walled-off little inner 
lodge, slept the medicine man whose duty it was 
to drive back approaching thunderclouds and 
rain. He had to risk awakening them! He had 
at least to attempt to rescue the boy! So, cast- 
ing off his robe, he climbed the outer wall of the 
lodge, and from it crawled along one of the big 
long poles that slanted up to the center post. 
There he found Lone Star, firmly lashed to one 
of its forks, and so far gone that he could no 
longer even groan. 

"Silently, very carefully, New Robe unwound 
the lashing, and then, fastening an end of it un- 
der the boy's arms, let him down to the ground. 
He then descended, and found that the boy was 

134 



New Robe, the Rescuer 

so numb that he could not walk. There was but 
one thing to do then. He took the helpless one 
upon his back, stole out of the lodge, and started 
with him across the big camp-ground. Dawn 
had come. As he was passing the circle of lodges, 
an early riser, a woman, saw him and with her 
shrieks aroused all the near-by sleepers. They 
rushed out, warriors and youths, the women fol- 
lowing, and overtook him. He made no resist- 
ance. He could have left the boy and made his 
own escape, but he would not do that. Several 
old warriors seized him and the boy, and hur- 
ried them to the lodge of the head chief, the 
women and the youths following and crying out 
that they be killed. Inside the lodge, the chief 
motioned them to seats, and in signs asked New 
Robe what he had to say for himself. 

"'I came not to harm you,' New Robe an- 
swered, *nor to take from you anything that is 
yours. I came to find this boy, and take him 
back to his mourning father and mother and sis- 
ter. And where did I find him ! Tied to the center 
post of your medicine lodge, there to die from 

^3S 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

want of water and food, a living but dying sac- 
rifice to the sun ! That were too cruel a thing to 
do. I ask you not to put him back there. If he is 
to die, I die with him. Shoot us, stab us, kill us in 
any way you choose, so that our death be quick! ' 

"The chief gave him no answer to that. He 
counseled with the other chiefs for a long time, 
and at last signed to him: 'You are so brave 
that we shall give you and the boy a chance for 
your lives. You are to remain here in this lodge 
to-day, to-night, to-morrow, and the following 
night. My young men will keep watch on you, 
so do not attempt to escape. On the morning 
following your second night here, you are to be 
given your chance to leave us unharmed. I shall 
not now tell you what that chance will be.' And 
then, turning to his men, he gave them certain 
orders, and they hurried from the lodge. 

"During the two days and two nights. New 
Robe prayed as he never had before, prayed for 
strength and courage to succeed in whatever he 
should be told to do. The people of the lodge 
treated him and the boy well. They did not 

136 



New Robe, the Rescuer 

want for food, nor anything else that would 
make for their comfort. Early in the morning 
after the second night, the chief signed to him: 
'It is not my fault, nor the fault of my under 
chiefs, that you have to undergo this trial for 
your life and that of the boy this day. My 
people were crying for your lives; they wanted to 
drag you two out from here and fill your bodies 
with arrows. I did not want them to do that; my 
council of chiefs did not want it done; so we coun- 
seled together and hit upon a way to give you 
a chance for your lives. It is not an easy thing 
that you have to attempt, but I hope you will 
succeed. And, whatever happens, believe this: 
I have done the best for you that I could ! ' 

"A little later, soon after the morning meal, 
the chief signed the two captives to follow him, 
and led them to the medicine lodge. In front of 
it were seven fresh buffalo bull heads which a 
number of men were skinning, and out in front 
of them, in a great half-circle, were gathered 
every man, woman, and child of the Mountain 
Crow tribe. New Robe wondered what was to 

137 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

be done with the seven buffalo heads; he sus- 
pected that they were to be in some way used in 
his trial for life. 

"'Come!' the chief signed, and led him and 
the boy to the entrance of the medicine lodge. 
There they stood, the mark of many flashing, 
angry eyes, and presently the skinners finished 
their work, and an old chief placed the shining 
skulls in a line out from the doorway of the lodge, 
each one of them a long step distant from an- 
other. 

"Again the head chief made signs to New 
Robe: 'There is your trial for life,' he said. 'You 
are to take the boy on your back, and step from 
one to the other of those skulls until you step 
upon the last one; pass from it to the ground. If 
you succeed in doing that, you and the boy are 
free to go to your home, and none of my people 
shall harm you on your way. But should you 
slip from a skull, and even so much as touch 
the ground with your toe, to save your balance, 
then the warriors standing out there will fall 
upon you, and kill you both.' 

138 



New Robe, the Rescuer 

"New Robe looked long at the seven skulls, 
considering what he should do. Being freshly 
skinned, he knew that they were very slippery. 
And then, which would be safest, to step slowly, 
carefully, from one to another, or make a run 
across them touching each one quickly, lightly? 
They were far apart; too far for slow, deliberate 
stepping; he concluded that the thing to do was 
to start running from the back of the lodge, and 
go along the line of them as fast as he could with 
his burden. He signed to the chief that he would 
do that, and led the boy to the back of the 
lodge. 

"While going there another thought came to 
him. He got back of the boy, and stooped, and 
while pretending to fix the young one's belt 
and leggins, kept spitting in two places upon 
the ground. He then stepped squarely in each 
pool of the spit and then upon soft ground, and 
coated his moccasin soles with the sandy earth. 
Then, suddenly swinging the boy to his back, 
and running swiftly across the lodge, he lit upon 
the first skull with his right foot, and went leaping 

139 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

on from one to another as fast as he could with 
the weight upon his back. The third skull began 
to turn with him, and he made a weak leap from 
it, barely alighting upon the next. But it held 
firm and he made a sure leap from it to the next, 
and from that to the next, and then, stepping 
squarely upon the seventh, and last skull, passed 
from it to the ground, and released the boy 
from his back. 

"The crowd stood silent, sullen, watching him. 
The head chief came to his side and spoke to 
them, and they suddenly broke out in loud 
cheers. The chief then signed to New Robe: 
* There is one thing more you are asked to do 
before we send you home. You do not have to 
do it, but we hope that you will. Come with me ! ' 

"They went to the lodge of a young chief, and 
when they were seated, the chief signed to New 
Robe: 'My father, once a great chief, is an old 
man. He does not want to die of old age and long 
and painful illness, and he wants a chance to kill 
one more enemy before he dies. He wants to fight 
you. If he kills you, then that will be good. If 

140 



New Robe, the Rescuer 

you kill him, then you shall have his war horse 
and all his weapons, and I will give you a fine 
present, and you and the boy shall go to your 
home in perfect safety. Now, what say you to 
that?' 

"*I have no weapons,' New Robe objected. 

"'Weapons you shall have,' the other replied. 
* All the warriors of the camp are anxious to loan 
you what they have. You shall go with me and 
examine what they have until you find just what 
you want.' 

"New Robe considered the matter. If he won 
out, what honor, what a coup it would be to 
return to his people with the weapons and the 
war horse of his enemy. If he lost, if he was 
killed — a sudden doubt struck him, and he 
asked: 'If I fall, what will become of the boy?' 

"'We promise you now,' the chiefs both an- 
swered, ' that in that case some of us will take the 
boy to within sight of the camp of your people, 
and send him safely to it.' 

" * I take your word for that, and now give 
me weapons,' said New Robe. 

141 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"He was offered his choice of many bows and 
spears, war clubs and knives, but took only a 
short, lithe bow and a handful of well-feathered 
arrows. Then, standing within the circle of the 
lodges, he awaited the coming of the old chief. 
He soon appeared, wearing a beautiful war cos- 
tume and riding a sorrel pinto war horse. And 
now, dressed as he was, and easily controlling 
his fiery- tempered mount, he did not seem to be 
so very old ; at a distance one would have thought 
him a young warrior. His weapon in hand was a 
long, scalp-tufted spear. On his back he carried 
a bow and otter-skin quiver of arrows, and in his 
belt, in a handsome sheath, quill-embroidered, 
was his knife. Said New Robe to himself: *He 
looks strong, he is brave. Well, I too must be 
brave, and watchful.' 

"Forth and back across the other side of the 
big circle rode the old man, singing a war song, 
brandishing his spear, keeping his prancing war 
horse well in hand. And then, suddenly urging 
him forward, he came swift as the wind at New 
Robe. And he, dropping his tattered wrap, 

142 



New Robe, the Rescuer 

awaited his coming with ready bow. On he came, 
shouting his war cry, and when quite close New 
Robe let fly his long and heavy-shafted arrow. 
It struck the old warror fair in the ribs. He 
flinched, the mounting blood choked oif his war 
cry, but on he came, and with a last great effort 
hurled his spear, and fell from his horse and died, 
— died without knowing that the weapon had 
passed high over New Robe's head ! 

"And then what a shout went up from all the 
people! Shouts of honor for the old chief who 
had preferred death in battle instead of in his 
lodge, and shouts too for the young man who had 
so bravely faced him. New Robe knew not what 
to do. He stood looking this way, that way, 
uncertainly. Then came to him the son of the 
old dead chief and signed to him to take the horse 
and the weapons of his enemy, and he did so. 
Then the young man brought to him another 
horse, a big and gentle black : * I said that I would 
give you something,' he signed, 'and here it is. 
The boy can ride it home. You may go now, 
both of you, and go without fear of pursuit : not 

H3 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

a man in this camp shall follow you ! ' And with- 
out wasting any time the two mounted the horses 
and rode northward away from the camp. 

"In the Blackfeet camp Lone Star's father and 
mother grieved more and more for the loss of him, 
but his sister, Red Cloud Woman, would not 
believe that he was dead; had somehow faith 
that he was alive; that New Robe would find 
him, and bring him safely home. And at last, 
when she saw that her father and mother were 
likely to go mad from grief, she told them that 
New Robe had gone in search of the boy, and that 
she would marry him, even if he returned alone. 
Morning after morning she went up on a butte 
close to camp and watched the great plain 
stretching away to the south, and all day long, 
and often on her couch at night, prayed for the 
safe return of brother and lover. 

"And then, at last, after many, many days of 
worried watching, she saw two riders coming 
from the south across the plain, and, sure that 
they were those she had been praying for, ran 
to meet them. They were the missing ones. They 

144 



New Robe, the Rescuer 

sprang from their fine horses, and she kissed 
first her brother and then clung to New Robe: 
*I am right now your woman,' she cried, and 
kissed him again. *And I am proud to be your 
woman,' she went on, *so take me up behind you 
and we will all ride home ! ' 

"She got up behind him on his prancing war 
horse, and as they rode in he quickly told her of 
his adventures, and how, at last, he had fought 
and killed the old war chief, and for that had 
been given the two horses and all the weapons 
and fine war clothes she saw. So it was that, 
coming into camp, she had the tale of his brave 
deeds to shout to the people, and they, gathering 
close around, honored his name and gave him 
a chief's greeting. Yes, the poor orphan had 
within the length of one moon become a chief, 
and had made a mourning father and mother 
happy. That very night he and Red Cloud 
Woman were given a lodge of their own, and their 
happiness was complete." 



IV 

PuHT-0-MUK-SI-KIM-IKS (ThE LakES InSIDE) 

St. Mary's Lakes 

August 10. 

WE left Little River on the sth, 
crossed the big ridge dividing the 
Arctic and the Atlantic waters, and 
made camp here on the big prairie at the foot of 
the Upper St. Mary's Lake. 

In the old days this great valley, hemmed in 
by gigantic mountains, was my favorite hunting 
ground after the buffalo were exterminated and 
there was no more sport to be had upon the 
plains. 

Hugh Monroe, or Rising Wolf, was, of course, 
the first white man to see these most beautiful of 
all our Northern Rockies lakes; with the Piegan 
Blackfeet he camped at them in 1816, and long 
afterward, with his growing family of hardy sons 
and daughters, this became his favorite hunting 
and trapping ground. When, in the 1830's, that 

146 



St. Mary's Lakes 

valiant and much beloved missionary, Father 
De Smet, S.J., was visiting the various tribes of 
this Northwest country, Monroe was engaged to 
take him to a conference with the North Black- 
feet, then camping on the Saskatchewan River. 
En route they camped at the foot of the lower of 
these lakes, and there erected a large wooden 
cross, and named the two sheets of water, St. 
Mary's Lakes. Later on, the Stevens expedition 
named them Chief Mountain Lakes, but that 
name did not last. Monroe and his brother 
trappers were all Catholics, and they continued 
to use the name that the great priest had given 
them, and on the maps they are St. Mary's 
Lakes to-day. 

During my long friendship with him, Mon- 
roe told me many stories of his adventures here 
in early days. This was his favorite mountain 
resort on account of the great numbers of moose 
that inhabited the heavily timbered valley and 
mountain slopes, and of the great variety and 
numbers of fur animals that were found here. 
The valley swarmed with elk and deer; there 

147 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

were countless flocks of bighorn and goats on 
the mountains, and herds of buffalo everywhere 
along the lower lake, and below it; but Monroe 
liked best of all the flesh of moose, and killed 
large numbers of them every season that he 
camped here. 

His method of catching wolves was simple 
and unique. He would build an oblong, pyram- 
idal log pen about eight by sixteen feet at the 
base, and eight feet in height, the last layer of 
logs being placed about eighteen inches apart. 
Easily climbing the slope of this, the wolves would 
jump down through the narrow aperture at the 
top to feed upon the quantities of meat that had 
been placed inside to decoy them, but they could 
not jump out. Often, of a morning, the trapper 
and his sons would find ten or more big wolves 
imprisoned in the trap, and, powder and ball 
being very costly, they would kill them with bow 
and arrows, skin them, and drag the carcasses 
to the river and cast them into it, then take the 
hides home and peg them on the ground to dry. 
In this manner they would often, in the spring, 

148 



Hugh Monroe 

have several hundred wolf pelts to pack in to 
Fort Benton for sale, and prime pelts sold at 
five dollars each, in trade. Their catch of beaver, 
otter, mink, martin, and fisher was also large. 

Monroe always camped at the foot of the lower 
lake, near the outlet, and was there more than 
once attacked by roving war parties of Assini- 
boines. Crows, and even the Yanktonais. The 
horses were kept at night in a strong corral just 
back of the lodge, and in the daytime were 
watched by some member of the family while 
they grazed on the rich prairie grasses. All the 
family — John and Fran9ois, the sons, Millie and 
Lizzie, the daughters — and even the mother 
had guns, flintlocks, and a good supply of powder 
and ball. Early one morning a large war party 
was discovered approaching the camp, sneaking 
from bush to bush, some crawling on all fours 
through the high grass. Lizzie opened fire upon 
them and killed her man, and then the fire be- 
came general on both sides. But the Monroes, 
in their trenches surrounding the lodge, had the 
best of it from the start, and eventually made 

149 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

the enemy retreat with a loss of five of their 
number. Late the following night the Assini- 
boines crept in to make another attack, but the 
Monroes were expecting them, waiting for them, 
and in the bright moonlight could take fairly 
accurate aim. They again drove them off, with a 
loss of two more of their number, and that time 
they kept going. Nothing more was seen of them. 
But for some days the Monroes did not venture 
far from their camp. 

I first saw the St. Mary's Lakes in October, 
1882, in company with Charles Phemmister, 
James Rutherford, Charles Carter, and Oliver 
Sanderville, all old plainsmen, good company, 
and best of hunters. We outfitted for the trip 
at the Old Agency, on Badger Creek, Blackfeet 
Reservation, and started northward. There was 
no trail after leaving the crossing of Little or 
Milk River, and we struck up country toward 
the big gap in the mountains, in which we knew 
the lakes must lie, and that evening camped on 
the shore of a large prairie lake that was black 
with ducks. I shot a dozen or more of them as 

150 



The Rocky Mountain Goat 

they flew over a long point, and to my surprise 
and delight found that they were all canvasbacks 
and redheads, and very fat from feeding upon 
the wild celery beds of the lake. I named the 
sheet of water Duck Lake. 

The next day we made a trail down the long 
hill, and camped at the foot of the lower lake, 
close to the outlet. Then began two weeks of 
most glorious sport. We shot elk, deer, and 
several grizzlies in the valley, and bighorn on 
a mountain that I named Flat Top, and combed 
that mountain from one end to another and on 
all sides for an animal known to us as the Rocky 
Mountain ibex. We had seen several skins of 
them, bought from the Stony Indians by Captain 
John Healy, of Fort Whoopup and Fort Benton 
fame, but none of us nor any man of our acquaint- 
ance — and we knew every trapper and trader 
in the country — had ever seen one of the ani- 
mals alive. Of course we found none, as this sub- 
Arctic animal, which we later learned is a true 
antelope, and not an ibex or goat, seldom leaves 
the high cliff mountains for the outer and lower 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

ones of the range. When, later, we did find them, 
we in our ignorance named them Rocky Moun- 
tain goats, and that is the common name for 
them to-day, despite the fact that they are ante- 
lopes. 

On this first visit to the St. Mary's Lakes 
country I was so impressed by the grandeur of 
its mountains, the beauty of its many lakes, and 
its plenitude of game, that thereafter for many 
years it was, more than anywhere else, my home. 
In 1883 I brought out to the lakes a good boat 
that I had had built for me at Fort Conrad, and 
with it learned that both lakes were alive with 
whitefish and Mackinaw, Dolly Varden, and 
cutthroat trout. During the summer of this 
year I named Red Eagle Mountain and Red 
Eagle Lake, after my uncle-in-law, Red Eagle, 
owner of the Thunder medicine pipe, and one of 
the most high-minded, gentle-hearted Indians 
that I ever knew. In the autumn of this year 
Dr. George Bird Grinnell joined me, and we 
hunted around the lower lake, and went up Swift 
Current far enough to see what we thought 

15a 




AT THE NARROWS. UPPER ST. xMARV'S LAKE 



Nanung the Mountains 

would possibly prove to be a glacier. We had not 
then time to learn if our surmise was correct. 
During our hunt Dr. Grinnell killed a large ram 
at long range, offhand, with one shot from his 
old Sharp's rifle, on the mountain next above 
Flat Top, and I therefore named it Single-Shot 
Mountain. 

In the summer of this year I also named Divide 
Mountain, because it is the outermost mountain 
on the Atlantic-Arctic watershed. At the same 
time I named Kootenai Mountain, also for a 
very good reason. Some members of that tribe 
were encamped beside me at the foot of the upper 
lake. I noticed often that they would ride out of 
camp at daylight and return at noon or a little 
later with all the bighorn or goat meat that their 
horses could carry, and finally I asked them where 
they went to make their killings so quickly. 

"Come with me tomorrow and I will show 
you something," one of them answered. And the 
next morning I rode with him up Red Eagle 
Valley and part way up a mountain, where we 
tied our horses and went on afoot for a couple of 

153 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

hundred yards. Then, looking down into a 
coulee, we saw a dozen or more bighorn in the 
bottom of it and killed four of them. They had 
been eating salty clay and drinking from a salt 
spring that oozes from the ground there, so I 
named the place Kootenai Lick, and also gave 
the mountain the name Kootenai. Thereafter 
I knew where to go for bighorn when I wanted 
one. 

In 1884 I named Almost-a-Dog Mountain, 
after one of the few survivors of the Baker 
massacre, which took place on the Marias River, 
January i, 1870. At that time Colonel E. M. 
Baker, with a couple of companies of cavalry 
from Fort Shaw, Montana, was trying to find 
the camp of Owl Child, a Piegan Blackfoot, and 
murderer of a settler named Malcolm Clark, and 
arrest him. By mistake he struck the camp of 
Heavy Runner and his band of friendly Indians, 
and, although the chief came running toward 
him waving his letters of recommendation and 
his Washington medals, Baker ordered his men 
to begin firing, and a terrible massacre ensued, 
.154 



The Baker Massacre 

the Indians firing not one shot in defense, as 
about all the able-bodied men were at the time 
on a buffalo hunt. When the firing was over, 
two hundred and seventeen old men and women 
and children lay dead and dying in their lodges 
and in the camp. The soldiers then shot the 
wounded, collected the lodges and property of 
the Indians in great piles, and set fire to them 
and departed.^ 

In the autumn of 1885 Dr. Grinnell, J. B. 
Monroe, and I made a trip up Swift Current 
River, and discovered and roughly measured the 
big glacier at the head of its middle fork. Dr. 
Grinnell killing a big ram on the ice while we 
were traversing it and avoiding its deep crevasses. 
That evening Monroe and I named the glacier 
in honor of Dr. Grinnell, and also named the 
mountain to the north of it after him. On the 
following day we were joined by Lieutenant — 
now Major — J. H. Beacom, Third Infantry, 
and he gave my Indian name, Apikuni, to the 

1 The above is an extract from an affidavit by the late 
Joseph Kipp, who was Baker^s scout and guide at the time. 

155 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

high mountain between Swift Current and the 
South Fork of Kennedy Creek. Upon our return 
to Upper St. Mary's Lake, Dr. Grinnell named 
Little Chief Mountain, Monroe gave Citadel 
Mountain its name, and I named Yellow Fish, 
Goat, Going-to-the-Sun, and Four Bears Moun- 
tains. Yellow Fish (O-to-ko'-mi) was an Indian 
who often hunted with us, and Four Bears (Nis- 
su'-kyai-yo) was the Blackfeet camp crier, and 
a most amusing man. 

It was in 1886, 1 believe, that we three, and my 
old-time friend, William Jackson, one-time scout 
for General Custer and General Miles, cut a trail 
to the head of the St. Mary's Valley and discov- 
ered the great sheet of ice which we named the 
Blackfeet Glacier. We at the same time named 
Gun-Sight Pass, and named the peak just west 
of the glacier, Mount Jackson. It should be 
Sik-si-kai'-kwan (Blackfeet Man), Jackson's In- 
dian name. He was a grandson of Hugh Monroe, 
a real plainsman, and one of the bravest men I 
ever knew. 

Going-to-the-Sun has been climbed this day, 

156 



r 




GOING-TO-THE-SUN MOUNTAIN 



Going- to-the-Sun Mountain 

and a flag has been planted upon its summit, 
by Paul E. Walker, Esq., of Topeka, Kansas. 
Owing to a high cliff upon its upper shoulder, 
the mountain has always been considered un- 
climbable. But after long search, and with no 
little risk, Mr. Walker finally worked out a 
way up the wall, and out upon the extreme 
crest, and was undoubtedly the first man, white 
or red, ever to stand there. He reports that a 
magnificent view of the mountains and plains 
is to be had from the great height. 

August 12. 

We have more real meat in camp. Yesterday 
Black Bull went up under the north point of 
Flat Top Mountain, which is on the Indian Res- 
ervation, and killed two fat young rams. I went 
fishing, and in the first pool of the river below the 
upper lake, caught several twcK and three-pound 
cutthroat trout. We had a great feast in the 
evening — roast bighorn ribs, broiled trout, a 
quantity of blueberries, and so on. 

After the feast was over came story-telling 
157 



« 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

time, and we heard this man's and that man's 
experiences in hunting in this vicinity in other 
days, Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill relat- 
ing a hard experience that befell him when once 
wintering here with me. He was chasing a 
wounded elk on the slope of Single-Shot Moun- 
tain, and stepped upon a sharp, snow-covered 
knot that pierced his foot through and through, 
and kept him laid up for two months. Yellow 
Wolf then related an old-time tale, which inci- 
dentally gave the reason for naming these two 
sheets of water the Inside Lakes. He called it, 
he said, — 

"the story of the first horses 

" In that long-ago time when the people had 
only their great, wolf -like dogs for carrying their 
belongings, there were two very poor orphans, a 
brother and sister, in the camp. The boy was 
very deaf, and because he seemed not to under- 
stand what was shouted at him, he was believed 
to be crazy, and not even the relatives of his dead 
father and mother cared to have him in their 

158 



The Story of the First Horses 

lodges. One would keep him for a time and tell 
him to go, and then another relative would take 
him in for a short time, and, getting tired of him, 
send him on to another lodge. And wherever he 
went, his beautiful young sister went with him. 
Often, in good weather, when camp was moved, 
the two would stay at the old camp-ground, liv- 
ing on cast-away meat so long as it lasted, and 
then they would overtake the camp and go into 
the nearest lodge, and at least be sure of a meal. 
They were generally barefooted and always 
shabbily dressed. It was a hard life that they led. 
And because he was so deaf, and believed to be 
crazy, the boy had not even one playmate in all 
the camp, nor had his sister, for she knew that 
it was her duty to be always at his side. There 
came a time, however, when a childless woman, 
wife of a great and rich chief, wanted the girl 
to raise as her own daughter, and after many 
days the boy persuaded her to be adopted, and 
he was left alone and more lonely than ever. 

"Not long after this separation, the camp 
moved one day, and the boy. Long Arrow, re- 

159 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

mained at the old camp-ground to live there as 
long as he could on the leavings of the people. 
At last he finished the last scrap of thrown 
away or forgotten meat and started to overtake 
the camp. The day was hot, terribly hot, but 
despite that the boy traveled as fast as he could, 
often running, and perspiration streamed from 
his body and his breath came short and fast in 
loud wheezes. Suddenly, while running, he felt 
something give way with a snap in his left ear, felt 
something moving out from it, and reaching up 
he pulled from it a long, round, waxy object that 
looked like a worm. He held it in his hand and 
ran on, and noted that with the left ear he could 
plainly hear his footsteps upon the trail. A little 
later something snapped in his right ear, and 
began to move out of it, and he took from it 
another worm-like substance, and keeping both 
in his hand, ran on. He could now hear plainly 
with both ears, and so happy was he that he felt 
almost as though he could fly. 

"But that was not all the good that was to 
come to him that day. Early in the morning a 

1 60 



The Story of the First Horses 

hunter had left camp with his pack dogs, and 
had taken the back trail in search of buffalo, 
and just before the boy appeared he had killed 
one, and was butchering it when he saw the boy 
approaching him. This hunter, Heavy Runner, 
was a chief, and one of the kindest men in the 
whole camp. He had long thought to do some- 
thing for this boy, and now, when he saw him 
coming, he said to himself: 'The time has come. 
I shall do something for him!' 

"The boy came to him and his kill, and he 
shouted to him, at the same time making signs: 
'Sit you down, my boy, and rest. You are wet 
with sweat, and covered with dust. You must 
be very tired. Take this piece of tripe and eat it. 
And now let me tell you something: from this 
day you are to be my boy. I adopt you. You 
shall have a place in my lodge; good clothes; a 
good bed. Try to be good, and deserve it all. I 
am going to try to make a man of you.' 

" ' Heavy Runner, your kind words make me 
want to cry,' said the boy, his voice trembling, 
tears dropping from his eyes. He swallowed 

i6i 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

painfully, brushed away the tears, sat up straight, 
and went on : ' I shall be glad to be your son. I 
will do all that I can to deserve what you give 
me. And now, let me tell you something. As I 
was running away back there on the trail, and 
breathing hard, first in one ear, and then in the 
other, something broke with a snapping noise 
and out came these two worm-like things, and 
at once hearing came to me. I believe that I 
could hear a mouse walking if he were away 
out there beyond your kill.' 

"'Now, that is good news, and a good sign!' 
Heavy Runner shouted. He was not yet used 
to the fact that the boy could hear. Then, re- 
membering, he said more gently: *You take a 
good rest while I finish butchering this animal 
and packing the dogs, and then we will each take 
what meat we can carry and go home. Yes, 
boy, you have a home now, and a good one.' 

"That evening, when Heavy Runner told his 
woman that he had adopted Long Arrow, she 
made a great outcry: 'How could you, and with- 
out asking me, adopt that deaf, crazy boy?' 

162 



The Story of the First Horses 

she asked. And then, she cried, and said that 
she would not have him for a son, and ran from 
the lodge. People gathered around and pitied her 
and said that she was right; that the boy was 
crazy and deaff and worthless, and would not 
mind, and as soon as he got good clothes he 
would run off and again live at old camp- 
grounds, 

"After a time she went back to her lodge, and 
as soon as she entered it Heavy Runner said 
to her: 'Now, at once, cease your crying, and 
take the anger from your heart. I have adopted 
this boy, and he is my boy. He is no longer deaf; 
he was never crazy. He is a good boy and I shall 
make a man, a chief of him. See that you treat 
him well, even if you cannot love him. And be- 
lieve this : if you do not treat him well, you shall 
be the one to suffer. To-morrow morning, begin 
making some good moccasins for him. I, myself, 
shall cut out his clothes, and he can sew them.' 
"So began a new life for Long Arrow. If the 
woman did not love him, she at least treated him 
well. He did everything that he could think of 

163 



St Mary's Lakes 

valiant and much beloved missionary, Father 
De Smet, S.J., was visiting the various tribes of 
this Northwest country, Monroe was engaged to 
take him to a conference with the North Black- 
feet, then camping on the Saskatchewan River. 
En route they camped at the foot of the lower of 
these lakes, and there erected a large wooden 
cross, and named the two sheets of water, St. 
Mary's Lakes. Later on, the Stevens expedition 
named them Chief Mountain Lakes, but that 
name did not last. Monroe and his brother 
trappers were all Catholics, and they continued 
to use the name that the great priest had given 
them, and on the maps they are St. Mary's 
Lakes to-day. 

During my long friendship with him, Mon- 
roe told me many stories of his adventures here 
in early days. This was his favorite mountain 
resort on account of the great numbers of moose 
that inhabited the heavily timbered valley and 
mountain slopes, and of the great variety and 
numbers of fur animals that were found here. 
The valley swarmed with elk and deer; there 

147 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

were countless flocks of bighorn and goats on 
the mountains, and herds of buffalo everywhere 
along the lower lake, and below it; but Monroe 
liked best of all the flesh of moose, and killed 
large numbers of them every season that he 
camped here. 

His method of catching wolves was simple 
and unique. He would build an oblong, pyram- 
idal log pen about eight by sixteen feet at the 
base, and eight feet in height, the last layer of 
logs being placed about eighteen inches apart. 
Easily climbing the slope of this, the wolves would 
jump down through the narrow aperture at the 
top to feed upon the quantities of meat that had 
been placed inside to decoy them, but they could 
not jump out. Often, of a morning, the trapper 
and his sons would find ten or more big wolves 
imprisoned in the trap, and, powder and ball 
being very costly, they would kill them with bow 
and arrows, skin them, and drag the carcasses 
to the river and cast them into it, then take the 
hides home and peg them on the ground to dry. 
In this manner they would often, in the spring, 

148 



Hugh Monroe 

have several hundred wolf pelts to pack in to 
Fort Benton for sale, and prime pelts sold at 
five dollars each, in trade. Their catch of beaver, 
otter, mink, martin, and fisher was also large. 

Monroe always camped at the foot of the lower 
lake, near the outlet, and was there more than 
once attacked by roving war parties of Assini- 
boines. Crows, and even the Yanktonais. The 
horses were kept at night in a strong corral just 
back of the lodge, and in the daytime were 
watched by some member of the family while 
they grazed on the rich prairie grasses. All the 
family ■ — John and Frangois, the sons, Millie and 
Lizzie, the daughters — and even the mother 
had guns, flintlocks, and a good supply of powder 
and ball. Early one morning a large war party 
was discovered approaching the camp, sneaking 
from bush to bush, some crawling on all fours 
through the high grass. Lizzie opened fire upon 
them and killed her man, and then the fire be- 
came general on both sides. But the Monroes, 
in their trenches surrounding the lodge, had the 
best of it from the start, and eventually made 

149 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

the enemy retreat with a loss of five of their 
number. Late the following night the Assini- 
boines crept in to make another attack, but the 
Monroes were expecting them, waiting for them, 
and in the bright moonlight could take fairly- 
accurate aim. They again drove them off, with a 
loss of two more of their number, and that time 
they kept going. Nothing more was seen of them. 
But for some days the Monroes did not venture 
far from their camp. 

I first saw the St. Mary's Lakes in October, 
1882, in company with Charles Phemmister, 
James Rutherford, Charles Carter, and Oliver 
Sanderville, all old plainsmen, good company, 
and best of hunters. We outfitted for the trip 
at the Old Agency, on Badger Creek, Blackfeet 
Reservation, and started northward. There was 
no trail after leaving the crossing of Little or 
Milk River, and we struck up country toward 
the big gap in the mountains, in which we knew 
the lakes must lie, and that evening camped on 
the shore of a large prairie lake that was black 
with ducks. I shot a dozen or more of them as 

150 



The Rocky Mountain Goat 

they flew over a long point, and to my surprise 
and delight found that they were all canvasbacks 
and redheads, and very fat from feeding upon 
the wild celery beds of the lake. I named the 
sheet of water Duck Lake. 

The next day we made a trail down the long 
hill, and camped at the foot of the lower lake, 
close to the outlet. Then began two weeks of 
most glorious sport. We shot elk, deer, and 
several grizzlies in the valley, and bighorn on 
a mountain that I named Flat Top, and combed 
that mountain from one end to another and on 
all sides for an animal known to us as the Rocky 
Mountain ibex. We had seen several skins of 
them, bought from the Stony Indians by Captain 
John Healy, of Fort Whoopup and Fort Benton 
fame, but none of us nor any man of our acquaint- 
ance — and we knew every trapper and trader 
in the country — had ever seen one of the ani- 
mals alive. Of course we found none, as this sub- 
Arctic animal, which we later learned is a true 
antelope, and not an ibex or goat, seldom leaves 
the high cliff mountains for the outer and lower 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

ones of the range. When, later, we did find them, 
we in our ignorance named them Rocky Moun- 
tain goats, and that is the common name for 
them to-day, despite the fact that they are ante- 
lopes. 

On this first visit to the St. Mary's Lakes 
country I was so impressed by the grandeur of 
its mountains, the beauty of its many lakes, and 
its plenitude of game, that thereafter for many 
years it was, more than anywhere else, my home. 
In 1883 I brought out to the lakes a good boat 
that I had had built for me at Fort Conrad, and 
with it learned that both lakes were alive with 
whitefish and Mackinaw, Dolly Varden, and 
cutthroat trout. During the summer of this 
year I named Red Eagle Mountain and Red 
Eagle Lake, after my uncle-in-law. Red Eagle, 
owner of the Thunder medicine pipe, and one of 
the most high-minded, gentle-hearted Indians 
that I ever knew. In the autumn of this year 
Dr. George Bird Grinnell joined me, and we 
hunted around the lower lake, and went up Swift 
Current far enough to see what we thought 

15a 




AT THE NARROWS. UPPER ST. MARY'S LAKE 



Naming the Mountains 

would possibly prove to be a glacier. We had not 
then time to learn if our surmise was correct. 
During our hunt Dr. Grinnell killed a large ram 
at long range, offhand, with one shot from his 
old Sharp's rifle, on the mountain next above 
Flat Top, and I therefore named it Single-Shot 
Mountain. 

In the summer of this year I also named Divide 
Mountain, because it is the outermost mountain 
on the Atlantic-Arctic watershed. At the same 
time I named Kootenai Mountain, also for a 
very good reason. Some members of that tribe 
were encamped beside me at the foot of the upper 
lake. I noticed often that they would ride out of 
camp at daylight and return at noon or a little 
later with all the bighorn or goat meat that their 
horses could carry, and finally I asked them where 
they went to make their killings so quickly. 

"Come with me to-morrow and I will show 
you something," one of them answered. And the 
next morning I rode with him up Red Eagle 
Valley and part way up a mountain, where we 
tied our horses and went on afoot for a couple of 

153 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

hundred yards. Then, looking down into a 
coulee^ we saw a dozen or more bighorn in the 
bottom of it and killed four of them. They had 
been eating salty clay and drinking from a salt 
spring that oozes from the ground there, so I 
named the place Kootenai Lick, and also gave 
the mountain the name Kootenai. Thereafter 
I knew where to go for bighorn when I wanted 
one. 

In 1884 I named Almost-a-Dog Mountain, 
after one of the few survivors of the Baker 
massacre, which took place on the Marias River, 
January i, 1870. At that time Colonel E. M. 
Baker, with a couple of companies of cavalry 
from Fort Shaw, Montana, was trying to find 
the camp of Owl Child, a Piegan Blackfoot, and 
murderer of a settler named Malcolm Clark, and 
arrest him. By mistake he struck the camp of 
Heavy Runner and his band of friendly Indians, 
and, although the chief came running toward 
him waving his letters of recommendation and 
his Washington medals, Baker ordered his men 
to begin firing, and a terrible massacre ensued, 
.154 



The Baker Massacre 

the Indians firing not one shot in defense, as 
about all the able-bodied men were at the time 
on a buffalo hunt. When the firing was over, 
two hundred and seventeen old men and women 
and children lay dead and dying in their lodges 
and in the camp. The soldiers then shot the 
wounded, collected the lodges and property of 
the Indians in great piles, and set fire to them 
and departed.^ 

In the autumn of 1885 Dr. Grinnell, J. B. 
Monroe, and I made a trip up Swift Current 
River, and discovered and roughly measured the 
big glacier at the head of its middle fork, Dr. 
Grinnell killing a big ram on the ice while we 
were traversing it and avoiding its deep crevasses. 
That evening Monroe and I named the glacier 
in honor of Dr. Grinnell, and also named the 
mountain to the north of it after him. On the 
following day we were joined by Lieutenant — 
now Major — J. H. Beacom, Third Infantry, 
and he gave my Indian name, Apikuni, to the 

1 The above is an extract from an affidavit by the late 
Joseph Kipp, who was Baker's scout and guide at the time. 

15s 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

high mountain between Swift Current and the 
South Fork of Kennedy Creek. Upon our return 
to Upper St. Mary's Lake, Dr. Grinnell named 
Little Chief Mountain, Monroe gave Citadel 
Mountain its name, and I named Yellow Fish, 
Goat, Going-to-the-Sun, and Four Bears Moun- 
tains. Yellow Fish (O-to-ko'-mi) was an Indian 
who often hunted with us, and Four Bears (Nis- 
su'-kyai-yo) was the Blackfeet camp crier, and 
a most amusing man. 

It was in 1886, 1 believe, that we three, and my 
old-time friend, William Jackson, one-time scout 
for General Custer and General Miles, cut a trail 
to the head of the St. Mary's Valley and discov- 
ered the great sheet of ice which we named the 
Blackfeet Glacier. We at the same time named 
Gun-Sight Pass, and named the peak just west 
of the glacier. Mount Jackson. It should be 
Sik-si-kai'-kwan (Blackfeet Man), Jackson's In- 
dian name. He was a grandson of Hugh Monroe, 
a real plainsman, and one of the bravest men I 
ever knew. 

Going-to-the-Sun has been climbed this day, 

156 




GOING-TO-THE-SUN MOUNTAIN 



Going- to-the-Sun Mountain 

and a flag has been planted upon its summit, 
by Paul E. Walker, Esq., of Topeka, Kansas. 
Owing to a high cliff upon its upper shoulder, 
the mountain has always been considered un- 
climbable. But after long search, and with no 
little risk, Mr. Walker finally worked out a 
way up the wall, and out upon the extreme 
crest, and was undoubtedly the first man, white 
or red, ever to stand there. He reports that a 
magnificent view of the mountains and plains 
is to be had from the great height. 

August 12. 

We have more real meat in camp. Yesterday 
Black Bull went up under the north point of 
Flat Top Mountain, which is on the Indian Res- 
ervation, and killed two fat young rams. I went 
fishing, and in the first pool of the river below the 
upper lake, caught several two- and three-pound 
cutthroat trout. We had a great feast in the 
evening — roast bighorn ribs, broiled trout, a 
quantity of blueberries, and so on. 

After the feast was over came story-telling 
HI 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

time, and we heard this man's and that man's 
experiences in hunting in this vicinity in other 
days, Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill relat- 
ing a hard experience that befell him when once 
wintering here with me. He was chasing a 
wounded elk on the slope of Single-Shot Moun- 
tain, and stepped upon a sharp, snow-covered 
knot that pierced his foot through and through, 
and kept him laid up for two months. Yellow 
Wolf then related an old-time tale, which inci- 
dentally gave the reason for naming these two 
sheets of water the Inside Lakes. He called it, 
he said, — 

"the story of the first horses 
"In that long-ago time when the people had 
only their great, wolf-like dogs for carrying their 
belongings, there were two very poor orphans, a 
brother and sister, in the camp. The boy was 
very deaf, and because he seemed not to under- 
stand what was shouted at him, he was believed 
to be crazy, and not even the relatives of his dead 
father and mother cared to have him in their 

158 



The Story of the First Horses 

lodges. One would keep him for a time and tell 
him to go, and then another relative would take 
him in for a short time, and, getting tired of him, 
send him on to another lodge. And wherever he 
went, his beautiful young sister went with him. 
Often, in good weather, when camp was moved, 
the two would stay at the old camp-ground, liv- 
ing on cast-away meat so long as it lasted, and 
then they would overtake the camp and go into 
the nearest lodge, and at least be sure of a meal. 
They were generally barefooted and always 
shabbily dressed. It was a hard life that they led. 
And because he was so deaf, and believed to be 
crazy, the boy had not even one playmate in all 
the camp, nor had his sister, for she knew that 
it was her duty to be always at his side. There 
came a time, however, when a childless woman, 
wife of a great and rich chief, wanted the girl 
to raise as her own daughter, and after many 
days the boy persuaded her to be adopted, and 
he was left alone and more lonely than ever. 

"Not long after this separation, the camp 
moved one day, and the boy. Long Arrow, re- 

159 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park ' 

mained at the old camp-ground to live there as j 
long as he could on the leavings of the people. ' 
At last he finished the last scrap of thrown 
away or forgotten meat and started to overtake 
the camp. The day was hot, terribly hot, but 
despite that the boy traveled as fast as he could, 
often running, and perspiration streamed from 
his body and his breath came short and fast in 
loud wheezes. Suddenly, while running, he felt 
something give way with a snap in his left ear, felt 
something moving out from it, and reaching up 
he pulled from it a long, round, waxy object that 
looked like a worm. He held it in his hand and 
ran on, and noted that with the left ear he could 
plainly hear his footsteps upon the trail. A little 
later something snapped in his right ear, and 
began to move out of it, and he took from it 
another worm-like substance, and keeping both 
in his hand, ran on. He could now hear plainly 
with both ears, and so happy was he that he felt 
almost as though he could fly. 

"But that was not all the good that was to 
come to him that day. Early in the morning a 

1 60 



The Story of the First Horses 

hunter had left camp with his pack dogs, and 
had talcen the back trail in search of buffalo, 
and just before the boy appeared he had killed 
one, and was butchering it when he saw the boy 
approaching him. This hunter, Heavy Runner, 
was a chief, and one of the kindest men in the 
whole camp. He had long thought to do some- 
thing for this boy, and now, when he saw him 
coming, he said to himself: 'The time has come. 
I shall do something for himl' 

"The boy came to him and his kill, and he 

shouted to him, at the same time making signs: 

«Sit you down, my boy, and rest. You are wet 

with sweat, and covered with dust. You must 

be very tired. Take this piece of tripe and eat it. 

And now let me tell you something: from this 

day you are to be my boy. I adopt you. You 

shall have a place in my lodge; good clothes; a 

good bed. Try to be good, and deserve^it all. I 

am going to try to make a man of you.' 

'"Heavy Runner, your kind words make me 
want to cry,' said the boy, his voice trembling 
tears dropping from his eyes. He swallowed 

i6i 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

painfully, brushed away the tears, sat up straight, 
and went on: 'I shall be glad to be your son. I 
will do all that I can to deserve what you give 
me. And now, let me tell you something. As I 
was running away back there on the trail, and 
breathing hard, first in one ear, and then in the 
other, something broke with a snapping noise 
and out came these two worm-like things, and 
at once hearing came to me. I believe that I 
could hear a mouse walking if he were away 
out there beyond your kill.' 

"'Now, that is good news, and a good sign!' 
Heavy Runner shouted. He was not yet used 
to the fact that the boy could hear. Then, re- 
membering, he said more gently: *You take a 
good rest while I finish butchering this animal 
and packing the dogs, and then we will each take 
what meat we can carry and go home. Yes, 
boy, you have a home now, and a good one.' 

"That evening, when Heavy Runner told his 
woman that he had adopted Long Arrow, she 
made a great outcry: 'How could you, and with- 
out asking me, adopt that deaf, crazy boy?' 

162 



The Story of the First Horses 

she asked. And then, she cried, and said that 
she would not have him for a son, and ran from 
the lodge. People gathered around and pitied her 
and said that she was right; that the boy was 
crazy and deaffand worthless, and would not 
mind, and as soon as he got good clothes he 
would run oflF and again live at old camp- 
grounds. 

"After a time she went back to her lodge, and 
as soon as she entered it Heavy Runner said 
to her: 'Now, at once, cease your crying, and 
take the anger from your heart. I have adopted 
this boy, and he is my boy. He is no longer deaf; 
he was never crazy. He is a good boy and I shall 
make a man, a chief of him. See that you treat 
him well, even if you cannot love him. And be- 
lieve this : if you do not treat him well, you shall 
be the one to suffer. Tcnmorrow morning, begin 
making some good moccasins for him. I, myself, 
shall cut out his clothes, and he can sew them.' 

"So began a new life for Long Arrow. If the 
woman did not love him, she at least treated him 
well. He did everything that he could think of 

163 



Blackfeel Tales of Glacier Park 

to please Heavy Runner. He went hunting with 
him, and brought home heavy loads of the meat 
that he killed, and in every possible way was of 
use to him. And yet he was not satisfied; he kept 
saying to himself: *I want to do something great 
for this man who is so good to me!' 

\ "Time passed. The boy grew up to be a fine 
young man ; good of heart and of fine appearance; 
and at last Heavy Runner's woman loved him as 
though he were her own son. But in one thing 
he was very different from the other young men 
of the camp : he made no close friends, and when 
not needed by Heavy Runner he wandered much 
by himself. Excepting his sister, whom he fre- 
quently took for long walks, he had little to 
say to any one, and so the people, all but she and 
his foster parents, continued to believe him 
crazy. 

"One evening he said to Heavy Runner: 'Tell 
me. What must one do to become a chief?' 

"'One must be very brave, must be fearless 
when facing the enemy, and of very kind heart; 
full of pity for the poor and the old and the sick, 

164 



The Story of the First Horses 

and always anxious to help them,' the chief 
replied. 

"'Well, I want to become a chief. What is 
the first thing for me to do?' he asked. 

" 'The first thing to do is to go to some far and 
dangerous place, and get your medicine. That 
is, something that will make you favored by the 
gods, and bring you good luck in battle, and in 
all matters of life,' Heavy Runner told him. 

"'That I shall do,' said the young man, 'but, 
first, will you not call in the chiefs, and the 
medicine men and braves, and let me hear from 
them where they went, and what they did to get 
their medicine ? I shall then have a better idea 
of what I am to do.' 

" ' We will have in our lodge full of them,' Heavy 
Runner said. And the next morning he shouted 
out invitations for a smoke, asking only the great 
of the tribe to come to it. They came, filling the 
lodge, and then, when the pipe was going the 
round of the circle, he told why he had invited 
them to the smoke; asked them to give their 
experiences in their search for medicines. 

165 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"One after another they told their adventures; 
where they went; what they did; what they saw; 
what narrow escapes from death they had. And 
at last it came Spotted Bear's turn. But he re- 
fused to give his experience. 

"'What,' he cried, *tell that crazy youth 
about my adventure.'* Why, I wouldn't waste 
my breath on him ! ' 

" 'But he is a poor boy; he wants to know; you 
might tell it him in a short way,' pleaded Heavy 
Runner. 

"'Well, I will tell it; not for his benefit, for he 
is crazy, and would not understand ; but I will 
tell it so that you all may know what I did,' the 
surly one answered. 

"'From this very place I traveled southward 
along the foot of the mountains. Seven days and 
seven nights I traveled, stopping only now and 
then for a short rest and sleeping very little, and 
on the morning after the seventh night I arrived 
at the shore of a small lake. There I met a 
stranger man who asked me what I sought, and 
I told him that I was wandering in search of a 

i66 



The Story of the First Horses 

strong, a powerful medicine. "Ah!" said he, 
"in such a matter I cannot help you. Go on 
south for three days and three nights, and you 
will find a man who will give you what you seek." 

"'I went on. Stopping only for short rests, 
and rarely sleeping, I traveled south for three 
days and three nights from that place, and in the 
morning after the third night arrived at a long, 
wide lake running away back in the mountains. 
I looked at it, looked at the mountains, turning 
this way, that way, and when I turned a last 
time, lo ! there in front of me stood a man, fierce 
of face, dressed in beautiful strange clothing, 
wrapped in a robe such as I had never seen be- 
fore, and carrying a spear with a big, flint point. 

"'"What do you here.?" he asked. "Are you 
not afraid to come to this, the home of us gods 
of the deep waters? " 

"'I answered that I was not afraid; that I 
feared neither gods nor men, nor any animal of 
the earth, the sky, or the deep waters. And at 
that he cried out: "You are brave! The brave 
shall be rewarded! Come with me!" 

167 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

" 'I went with him to his lodge. I am promised 
to secrecy; I dare not tell you where it was. He 
took me in and fed me, and gave me this robe 
that I am wearing, this medicine robe, and taught 
me the prayers and ceremony that goes with it. 
I asked him what kind of a robe it was, and he 
answered that it was the skin of an elk-dog; ^ 
an animal as large as an elk, and, like the dog, 
useful for carrying burdens. The gods, he said, 
rode them, guided them wherever they wanted 
to go. 

"'Said I: "May I have one of those elk-dogs 
to ride home?" 

"'"No! They are only for the gods to use," 
he answered, and told me to go. I came home. I 
have the robe. Here it is, proof of all that I have 
told you. Ah! And this crazy youth would know 
where I went, what I did ! It is to laugh to think 
of his going there!' 

"The pipe went a last round, and then the 

chiefs and medicine men and braves went home. 

As soon as they were gone Long Arrow said to 

* Po-no-ka-mi-ta (elk-dog). The horse. 
i68 



The Story of the First Horses 

Heavy Runner: 'My chief, you know that I am 
not crazy. I feel that I must go on adventure, 
and I want to go where Spotted Bear went, and 
prove to him that I can go as far and face as 
many dangers as he did. Will you let me go, and 
keep secret from every one whither I have gone 
and for what purpose?' 

"'What you propose is just what I want you 
to do,' Heavy Runner answered. 'You shall 
start to-morrow, taking with you all the mocca- 
sins and other things you will need, and your 
foster mother and I will tell no one anything 
about you.' 

"At break of day the next morning, while all 
the people of the great camp still slept. Long 
Arrow started on his journey of discovery. 
Straight south he went, by day and by night, 
resting and sleeping at long intervals, and then 
only for a very short time. On the third day he 
arrived at the small lake that Spotted Bear had 
mentioned, and there met the man of that place, 
even as he had done. 

"'What seek you?' the man asked. 
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Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"'Knowledge! Medicine! The way to become 
a chief!' Long Arrow answered. 

"'I cannot help you. Go on south for seven 
days and seven nights, and you will come to a 
great lake, and there you will meet a man who 
can help you if he cares to do so. It may be that 
he will not even show himself to you, but any- 
how it is worth your while to go there and try 
to meet him.' 

"Long Arrow went on for seven days and 
seven nights, resting and sleeping less than ever, 
eating nothing except now and then a piece of 
dry meat not so large as his hand. Early in the 
morning after the seventh night, exhausted, 
hardly able to drag one foot after the other, he 
came to the great lake, and some distance back 
from its shore fell down on the grass and fell 
into a sound sleep. It was late afternoon when 
he awoke, and, opening his eyes, he was sur- 
prised to see a boy standing beside him. He 
was a beautiful child, by far the most perfect 
of form and feature that Long Arrow had 
ever seen; so beautiful that it did not seem 

170 



The Story of the First Horses 

possible he could be of this earth, a child of 
the people of this earth. 

"Said the boy to him: 'I have been waiting 
here a long time for you to awake. My father 
invites you to his home.' 

"*I shall be glad to visit him,' Long Arrow 
answered, and sprang up, put on his weapons, 
and was ready. 

"The boy led him straight to the shore of the 
lake, and there cried out: 'Do not be afraid, 
follow me ! ' And having said that, changed into 
a snipe, entered the water and disappeared. 

"Long Arrow was afraid, terribly afraid of the 
deep, dark water, and the mystery of a place 
where a child could suddenly become a snipe. 
But he said to himself: 'If I fail in my search 
for a medicine it shall be through no fault of 
mine,' and he entered the water. Lo! it did not 
wet him; did not touch him. It parted before 
him and he went on down the sloping, sandy 
bottom of the lake, and soon saw, close ahead, a 
large, fine lodge, on which were painted in red 
and black the figures of two strange animals. 

171 



\ 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 



The boy, arrived at the doorway of the lodge 
changed suddenly from a snipe back to his natu- 
ral self, and cried out: 'Follow me! Here you 
will be welcome,' and went in. Long Arrow, 
following him, found himself facing a fine-looking 
man at the back of the lodge. He was sitting 
cross-legged on his couch, and wore a beautiful 
black robe which entirely covered his legs and 
feet. ^ You are welcome here, my son, be seated,* 
said the man, and told his wife to prepare food 
for his guest. 

"Long Arrow looked about him. On all sides 
the lodge was hung with beautiful shields, war 
clothes, weapons, handsomely painted and fringed 
pouches of sacred medicines, and a porcupine- 
quill embroidered belt of such brilliant colors 
that it shamed the rainbow. 

"The woman of the lodge soon set food before 
Long Arrow, and, having long fasted, he ate 
largely. The man then filled and lighted a pipe, 
passed it to his guest, and said : ' I knew that you 
were coming, and I wondered if you would have 
the courage to follow my son from the shore of 

172 



The Story of the First Horses 

this lake down here to my lodge. Not long ago 
a man of your people came here, but he was 
afraid; he would not follow my son. And there 
he made a great mistake. I was going to give 
him the most valuable present ever given by 
gods to men. As it was, I went out to him where 
he sat far back from the shore, and gave him the 
tanned hide of an elk-dog, and sent him home. 
He was not worthy of a better present. But 
you are different. I shall give you something of 
great value. Remain here with us a few days. 
My son shall show you my band of elk-dogs; 
you shall hunt and kill meat for us ; and when 
you go, then you shall have the great present.' 

"The boy went out with Long Arrow and 
showed him the elk-dogs. They came running 
from the timber out upon the open prairie at the 
foot of the lake, and were a wonderful sight. 
They were far larger than an elk, of shining black 
color, had tails of long hair, and there was long 
hair all along the top of their necks and hanging 
down their foreheads from between their rest- 
less ears. They were of all sizes, from suckling 

173 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

young to old males and females, and all were 
very fat and playful, even the oldest of them. 

"'Young man of the earth,' said the boy, 'if 
you are wise and watchful, these animals and 
my father's black robe and his many-colored 
belt may be your present: the three go together. 
You have noticed that my father always keeps 
his feet covered with the black robe; that when 
he arises and goes out of the lodge he is very 
careful to keep the robe lowered around him, 
like a dragging woman's dress, so that his feet 
cannot be seen. Well, you have but to see those 
feet, and anything that you ask for will be 
yours.' 

"'I shall do my best to see those feet,' said 
Long Arrow. 

"Several days passed. The old people of the 
lodge were very kind to Long Arrow, and he in 
turn did his best to please them, hunting most 
all of the time and bringing in much meat. And 
what time he was not hunting, he would sit close 
to the herd of beautiful elk-dogs and watch them 
feed and play. When in the lodge he watched 

174 



The Story of the First Horses 

closely for a sight of the old man's feet, but he 
ever kept them closely covered. 

"At last, one evening, the old man started to 
go out of the lodge, keeping his robe well down 
upon the ground about him, but as he stepped 
over the low front of the doorway his right knee 
raised the robe and Long Arrow saw his left 
foot; and lo! it was not a human foot: it was 
the hoof, the round, hard hoof of an elk-dog 1 He 
gave a cry of surprise at the sight, and the old 
man, realizing what had happened, exclaimed: 
*Hai-yo! How careless of me! Well, it cannot 
be helped, it must have been fated that he should 
see it!' 

"He went on out, and upon returning took no 
pains to conceal his feet: both of them and the 
ankles were those of the elk-dog. 

" 'Well, you have seen my feet, so you can now 
tell me what I shall give you,' said the old man, 
as he resumed his seat. 

"'Now, don't hesitate; speak right out; ask 
for the three things,' whispered the boy. 

"And Long Arrow, taking courage, answered: 
I7S 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

*Give me three things: your black robe, your 
many-colored belt, and your elk-dogs.' 

"*Ha! You ask a great deal/ the old man 
cried, *but, because you are brave and good- 
hearted and not lazy, you shall have the robe 
and the belt and a part of my band of elk-dogs. 
The robe and the belt are the elk-dog medicine. 
Without them you could never catch and use the 
animals. There are many prayers and songs and 
a long ceremony that go with them, and I have 
to teach it all to you. When you have thoroughly 
learned them, then you shall go home with your 
presents.' 

"Long Arrow was many evenings learning 
them all, but at last he could repeat every one 
of them perfectly, and dance the dances as well 
as the old man himself, and finally the latter 
told him one evening : — 

"'You have done well. I am glad that my 
elk-dogs and my medicines are to be in your 
hands. You may start for home to-morrow. 
And now, listen! Take good heed of what I am 
about to tell you. 

176 



The Story of the First Horses 

"'When you leave here, wearing the black 
robe and the belt, you are to travel for three 
days and three nights and never once look back. 
When you rest, you are to face the north. Be 
sure, now, that, traveling or resting, you never 
once look back. The elk-dogs will not at first 
follow you, but on the third day of your home- 
ward journey you will hear them coming behind 
you. Even then you must not look back, but 
keep on walking. After a time they will come 
on right beside you, and with a rope that I shall 
give you, you will catch one of them and mount 
and ride it, and all the others will follow you. 
They will always do that so long as you have the 
black robe. Lose that, and you lose your animals; 
they will become wild, and you will never be 
able to catch and train them.' 

"'As you say, so shall I do,' Long Arrow 
answered. 

"And early the next morning the old man gave 
him the robe, the belt, and a rope made from 
the head hair of buffalo bulls, and he started for 
home, keeping ever in mind and obeying carefully 

177 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

the old man's instructions. At times he had his 
doubts of the old man. Perhaps a big joke was 
being played upon him; the elk-dogs would not 
come on the third day, nor any other day! But 
he would soon cast off such thoughts, and go on 
with renewed faith that all would be well with 
him. 

"And on the third day he heard behind him 
the thunder of many hard hoofs upon the hard 
plain; the occasional whinnying that he had 
learned to love so well ! And then, an old female 
leading them, the elk-dogs came close up beside 
him, and he caught and mounted one of them, 
and rode on. How happy he was! He realized 
what this would mean for himself and for the 
people. These elk-dogs would rapidly increase in 
number; there would soon be enough of them for 
all the people, and then they would ride instead 
of walk, and their lodges and all their belongings 
would be carried by the animals. 'And now I can 
do something for those who have been so good to 
me,' he said to himself, and rode on, singing the 
new songs that he had learned. 

178 



The Story of the First Horses 

" It was late in the afternoon on the day that 
he approached the camp. All the men had re- 
turned from the hunt; every one was outside the 
lodges, resting in the warm sunshine. The first 
to discover him gave a shout of surprise and 
alarm. All the people sprang up and stood gazing 
at the strange sight. They asked one another 
what the strange big black animals could be? 
And was it really a man sitting astride one of 
them? 

"'It IS some fierce god bringing his fierce 
animals to destroy us,' shouted Spotted Bear, 
the very man who had so contemptuously used 
Long Arrow, who had not had the courage to 
follow the boy-snipe into the water. Again he 
cried out: 'Surely it is an evil one coming to 
destroy us.' And he fled, and all the people fled 
with him and took to the brush. 

"Long Arrow rode into camp and dismounted 
at Heavy Runner's lodge, and all the elk-dogs 
came up and crowded around him and the 
one of them that he had been riding. * Heavy 
Runner! Heavy Runner!' he shouted. 'Be not 

179 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

afraid! I am only your son, come back to 
you!' 

"Heavy Runner heard the well-known voice 
and was no longer afraid. He came hurrying 
from the brush, all the people following him, and 
they all crowded around Long Arrow and his 
strange animals. Said the youth then: ^Only 
father and mother that I ever knew, I have 
brought to you, excepting one female and one 
male, all these strange and useful animals. As 
you see, they can be ridden; you will no longer 
have to walk. Also, they will carry for you every- 
thing that is yours. I am glad that I can give 
them to you, both of you who have been so good 
to me.' 

" * How generous of you ! ' Heavy Runner cried. 
But his wife could say nothing: she embraced 
Long Arrow and wept. 

"'Where did you get the strange black ones?' 
a chief asked. 

"'I will tell you all about it this evening; I am 
cautioned not to talk about the gods in the day- 
time,' Long Arrow answered. And after picket- 

180 



4 



:^^^ 




GOING-TOT HE-SUN CHALET, UPPER ST. MARY'S LAKE 



The Story of the First Horses 

ing the animal he had ridden on good grass, and 
driving the others out from camp, he went into 
the lodge and rested. 

"That evening all the chiefs and warriors 
came into the lodge. Spotted Bear with them, 
and he told all about his strange adventures, 
of his life with the Under-Water People, and 
how the old man had given him the elk-dogs, 
and the black robe and the belt that he wore. 
And, of course, he told about Spotted Bear's 
cowardice in failing to follow the boy-snipe into 
the water, and he fled from the lodge, and his 
chieftainship dropped from him as he fled. Ever 
afterward he was no more than a woman in that 
great camp; never again was he allowed to sit 
with the chiefs and warriors! And when Long 
Arrow had finished telling them all about his 
wonderful adventures, the chief cried out: 'We 
will move camp to that lake of the Under-Water 
People. They have more elk-dogs; we will ask 
for them, give anything to obtain possession 
of such valuable animals.' 

" They moved south to the lake, but, search 
i8i 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

as they would, could find no elk-dogs, nor did 
the boy-snipe nor any of the Under-Water People 
appear, although the medicine men made sac- 
rifice to them and prayed them to show them- 
selves. They did discover, however, that above 
this lake was another and a longer one, hemmed 
in by still higher mountains, and so they named 
the two the Inside Lakes, and that is the name 
they bear to this day." 

August 12. 

Last night we all gathered in Stabs-by-Mis- 
take's lodge, and, while the pipe was filled and 
refilled, and passed from hand to hand on many 
rounds, we had more tales, strange and weird, of 
the people of the ancient days. One that our 
host told especially interested me, and here it 
is, literally translated for your perusal. It was 
the story, he said, of 

"one horn, shamer of crows 

"It was in the long ago time, when all three 
of our tribes, the Blackfeet proper, the Bloods, 

182 



One Horn, Shamer of Crows 

and we, the Pikun'i, whom the whites mistak- 
enly call Blackfeet, were still living in the North 
country. The camp of the Pikun'i was on Big 
River, close up to the foot of the mountains. 
One of the great chiefs of the tribe was One 
Horn. Very brave he was, and very rich, for his 
band of horses numbered more than a hundred 
head. He had two wives, sisters, but no children. 
Many orphans called him father, for he had poor 
old couples care for them, and kept them all well 
supplied with meat and with skins for clothing. 
He was a peculiar man, was One Horn. He sel- 
dom visited in other lodges, and was a man of 
few words ; it was always difficult to get him to 
tell of his brave deeds. 

"One summer night One Horn had an uneasy 
dream about his horses, and with the first faint 
light of coming day arose, washed and dressed 
himself, and took up his weapons and went out 
to see if his herd was anywhere in sight. He 
climbed to a little rise on the edge of the plain, 
saw them quietly feeding at a distance, and then 
saw something else: two men asleep in a coulee 

183 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

close under the little rise. They were, he thought, 
young men of the camp, watchers of the horse 
herds, and he concluded to surprise them and 
scold them for sleeping when they should be 
watching the plains for the approach of enemies. 
More from habit than anything else, he drew his 
bow, fitted a war arrow to it, and then, creeping 
close to the sleeping ones, shouted: 'Awake! 
You lazy ones, awake!' 

"To his great surprise they were two enemies, 
who sprang up at the sound of his voice, and he 
shot one of them in the breast, and he fell, and as 
the other turned and ran, he fired an arrow at 
him and struck him in the back, but he kept on 
running, the arrow dangling and swaying from 
his back, and he soon disappeared in the thick 
brush bordering the river. One Horn went back 
to camp and sent the warriors out to look for the 
wounded man, but they never found him. 

"Although a very brave warrior. One Horn's 
voice was always for peace. He thought much 
about the wars of tribe against tribe and the great 
loss of lives they caused, and wished that he 

184 



One Horn, Shamer of Crows 

could put an end to it all. He counted up the dif- 
ferent tribes with whom his people were at war 
— the Sioux, the Assiniboines, Cheyennes, Paw- 
nees, Snakes, Bannocks, Pend d'Oreilles, Flat- 
heads, Nez Perces, Kootenai, and Crows. And 
the worst of them all were the Crows. He deter- 
mined to go to the Crows and try to make peace 
between them and his people. 

"Another thought came to him: It was best 
to say nothing to his people about his plan, for 
many would make serious objection to it. If he 
succeeded, they should know all about it upon 
his return. If he failed, he would never tell them 
where he had been. So, one evening, he gave his 
women orders what to do, and kept his horses 
close in around his lodge. Late that night, when 
all the camp was asleep, down came the lodge, 
the pack and travois horses were quietly loaded, 
and he and his women headed southward, he 
driving his big herd in the lead. The next morn- 
ing the people found that they had a mystery 
that they could not solve: One Horn was gone 
with all his belongings, gone without telling them 

i8s 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

one word of his intentions! Why had he left 
them so secretly, and whither had he gone? 
They never ceased talking about it and wish- 
ing that he would return; they felt safe when he 
was at their backs. 

"Traveling south day after day along the foot 
of the mountains, One Horn and his women at 
last struck the River-of-Many-Chiefs-Gather- 
ing, and, following it up, came in sight of the big 
prairies at the foot of the lower one of these In- 
side Lakes. It was then dusk, but not so dark but 
what they could see that there was a big camp 
of people at the edge of the timber bordering the 
lake shore. Said One Horn, 'They must be the 
ones I seek, the Mountain Crows. As soon as 
they sleep, we will go on and put up our lodge 
near theirs.' 

"Early the next morning an old man stepped 
out from his lodge, and saw a strange lodge 
standing by itself just outside the circle of the 
big camp. He looked at it a long time, and the 
growing light at last enabled him to see that there 
were two huge bears painted on its new white 

i86 



One Horn, Shamer of Crows 

leather skin. He turned and hurried to the lodge 
of the head chief of the camp, aroused him, and 
cried : 'Here is a mystery; something to be looked 
into: just outside the circle of our camp a strange 
lodge is standing. It belongs not to us Mountain 
Crows, nor to our brothers, the River Crows. I 
know that, for it has painted upon it two big 
bears, and neither of our tribes has that medi- 
cine.' 

"The chief hurried to get up and dress, and so 
did others, and they soon left their lodges and 
approached the strange lodge. There was a fire 
within it. Voices were heard in low-toned con- 
versation. Close around a few horses were 
picketed, and farther out grazed a large band of 
them, mostly grays and blacks. It was evident 
that the owner of the lodge was a chief, a bear 
medicine man, a very rich man. The Crow chief 
thrust aside the door curtain of the lodge, and 
entered, the others following. A fine-appearing 
man at the back of it gave them the sign for 
welcome, and motioned them where to sit. He 
lifted a big filled pipe and lighted it, and passed 

187 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

it. The Crow chief smoked first, and then one by 
one those with him. 

"Having passed on the pipe, the Crow chief 
signed to the stranger: *You are a Blackfoot?' 

"'Yes, I am a Blackfoot,' One Horn answered. 
'You are wondering why I, an enemy, have come 
here and set up my lodge beside you. You shall 
know ! I have come to try to make peace between 
your people and my people. I am tired of all this 
war, and its wasting of men's lives, and making 
women and children mourn.' 

" * You say well. Your talk deserves attention. 
Peace between us would be good for us both. 
1 will talk to my people about it,' said the Crow 
chief. 

"And just then One Horn's women set before 
him and the other Crows dishes of rich berry 
pemmican, the best of dried meat and back fat, 
and they ate with the outside chief. Then they 
smoked again and went home, the Crow chief 
saying that he would soon give a call for a coun- 
cil, and would send for the Blackfoot to join in it. 

" It was not until near sunset, however, that a 
i88 



One Horn, Shamer of Crows 

youth came to invite One Horn to the Crow 
chief's lodge. He found assembled there all the 
head men of the tribe, and the chief told him 
that, after long talk, they had decided that they, 
too, were tired of war, and would be glad to make 
peace with the Blackfeet. 

"*But be not in a hurry to return home,' the 
Crow chief concluded. 'Make us a long visit, 
and during it we will decide together where and 
when our two tribes shall meet to make this 
lasting peace treaty.' 

"Answered One Horn: *I shall be glad to 
camp here with you for the rest of this moon.' 
And all those present signed to him: 'Yes. Re- 
main here with us for a time.' 

"One Horn and the Crow chief became friends. 
They hunted together, visited often in each 
other's lodge, and together were invited to other 
lodges to feast and smoke, and join in the war- 
riors' tales of raids and battles and adventures 
along far trails. 

"The River Crows were at this time encamped 
just over the ridge from the Inside Lakes, on 

189 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

Little River, and some of them came frequently 
to visit their Mountain brothers at the foot of 
the lakes. Among others came a man who was 
always counting his coups. In a gathering of the 
warriors he would wait until all had told what 
they had done in war against their enemies, and 
then he would count one coup, only one, that was 
far greater than any of theirs. 

"On a day when One Horn was visiting in the 
Crow chief's lodge, this man was one of the 
guests. The talk was of war, and after many there 
had told what they had done, he said that, with 
a friend, he was approaching the Blackfeet camp, 
and they were discovered and surrounded by all 
the warriors of the tribe. His friend soon fell, 
as full of arrows as a porcupine is full of quills, 
but that he, charging this way, that way,'^shoot- 
ing arrows fast and killing many Blackfeet, made 
them give way before him and he escaped from 
them, although wounded in the back. Later on, 
when safe from pursuit, he had drawn out the 
arrow, and still had it, proof enough of the truth 

of his tale. 

190 



One Horn, Shamer of Crows 

"This man then turned to One Horn, and said, 
by signs, of course, * We have all of us here told 
about our fights, and now it is your turn : tell of 
your brave deeds.' 

"*I have nothing to say that will interest 
you; mine have been just the common experi- 
ences of those who go on raids. No, I have noth- 
ing to say,' he answered. 

"'But you must tell us one great thing that 
you have done,' the River Crow insisted. 

"And again One Horn answered: 'What I 
have done would not interest you. I have nothing 
to say.' 

"The man then turned to the Mountain Crow 
chief and said : 'This is a poor kind of a friend for 
you to have! He has done nothing; he is no chief, 
he is a woman ! ' 

"'I do not know for sure, but I think that he 
is a chief, that he has a big war record,' the host 
answered him. 

"And then the guests went their several ways, 
the River Crow laughing shrilly, contemptu- 
ously, as he left the lodge. 

191 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park . 

"It was not long after this that the River Crow 
came over again from Little River, and again 
was one of a party of guests in the lodge of the 
chief of the Mountain Crows. Once more the talk 
was of war, and when it came this man's turn 
to talk, he drew an arrow from his quiver, laid 
it on the ground in front of him, and said : 'There ! 
No one here, nor in the camp of the Mountain 
Crows and the camp of the River Crows, has 
ever equaled what that stands for. That is the 
arrow that I drew from my back after my partner 
was killed, and I fought my way single-handed 
through the hundreds of Blackfeet warriors, 
killing many of them, and so frightening them 
that they dared not pursue me.' 

"One Horn leaned over, looked at the arrow, 
and gave an exclamation of disgust: 'That is 
my arrow/ he signed. 'I know this man now. 
At dawn, one morning, I discovered him and his 
partner asleep near our camp. I crept up to them 
and shouted, thinking that they were our horse- 
herd watchers, and when they sprang up, I saw 
that they were enemies. I shot one of them dead, 

192 



One Horn, Shamer of Crows 

This man turned and ran, never even firing at 
me, and I shot an arrow into his back, but he 
kept on going and escaped from me in the brush! 
Yes. That is the very arrow I shot into himl' 

"'It is a He! A big he!' the River Crow said, 
and signed. 

"For answer to that, One Horn went to the 
door of the lodge and shouted to his women to 
bring over his quiver of arrows. It was soon 
handed in to him, and he said: '1 have here two 
kinds of arrows : hunting arrows and war arrows. 
Here are the war arrows.' And he laid them be- 
side the arrow in front of the boaster. All there 
saw at once that they were exactly like it in 
every way, had the same private mark just 
back of the point. And suddenly, with jeers and 
cries of 'Liar!' 'Coward!' they took handfuls of 
ashes and earth from the fireplace and threw 
them in the River Crow's face and on his head, 
and he ran for the door and was gone, leaving the 
arrow behind. One Horn picked it up and put it 
in his quiver, and said: 'That no doubt ends his 

lying bragging!' 

193 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"Some days after this exposure of his lying, 
the River Crow, watching his chance, entered 
the lodge of the Mountain Crow chief and said 
to him: 'That Blackfoot has shamed me. I was 
a chief, but now all people laugh at me. I want 
revenge. Let me kill that friend of yours and I 
will give you three of my best horses!' 

"*What you ask is impossible!' the chief re- 
plied. 'He is my friend! We have smoked to- 
gether, have eaten together. I cannot allow you 
to kill him. And for your lying you deserve what 
you got!' 

"The River Crow sneaked away, but on the 
next evening, when none but the chief and his 
women were at home, he came again. And this 
time he said : 'Let me do what I want to do; you 
know what that is; and I will give you five of my 
best horses and my beautiful young daughter.' 

"And this time the chief did not give him a 
short answer. He thought over the offer for a 
long time. He knew that it would be a terrible 
thing to betray his Blackfoot friend, but the 
temptation was great. His women were getting 

194 



One Horn, Shamer of Crows 

old. He wanted that beautiful girl. And at last 
he gave way to the temptation: 'It shall be as 
you wish,' he told the man. 'AH is arranged for 
to-morrow; we go with the hunters on a big buf- 
falo hunt, and there will be no chance for you to 
do what you want to do. Come the day after to- 
morrow and I will help you — if you need my 
help — to kill the Blackfoot.' 

"Very early the next morning the hunters 
started out after buffalo, One Horn taking with 
him one of his women to help in the butchering 
and packing in of the meat. They were no sooner 
gone than one of the Crow chief's women hur- 
ried to One Horn's lodge and told his other 
woman all about the plan to kill him. She told 
it because she was jealous; she did not want her 
man to take another wife! 

"So it was that, when One Horn came home 
that evening, this wife ran to him and embraced 
and kissed him as though she would never let 
him out of her arms. This strong showing of love 
was unusual with her, and he asked her the cause 

for it. 

195 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

" 'Because tomorrow you are to die, and sister 
and I are to become slaves. See now what you 
have done by coming to try to make peace with 
these Crows ! ' And she told him all about the plot 
to end his life. 

" But One Horn just laughed : 'Wipe away your 
tears and take courage,' he told her. 'These 
Crows will not kill me, a bear medicine man, and 
a chief. They cannot kill me. I will show you 
to-morrow something that will surprise you!' 

"That night he kept his favorite war horse 
picketed close to his lodge, and the next morning 
he carefully dressed himself in his beautiful war 
clothes, painted himself and his horse, took his 
bow and arrows, his shield and spear, and rode 
into the center of the big camp, and called upon 
the Crow chief to come out. He did come out, 
also dressed for battle, and One Horn cried out to 
him, at the same time making signs, so that he 
would be sure to understand, 'Your plot is dis- 
covered. So you and that River Crow are going 
to kill me. Where is he.^ Call him. I want to fight 
you both. I am a bear. I fight like a bear. Come! 

196 



One Horn, Shamer of Crows 

Hurry! Let us fight. Ha! I am going to fight 
my true friend, the chief of the Mountain Crows, 
he who smoked and ate with me, he who was go- 
ing to join me in making a lasting peace be- 
tween our two tribes. Come! Let us fight! Shall 
it be on horseback or afoot? I give you the 
choice.' 

"The Crow chief gave him no answer. Some 
of the people, looking on, were beginning to show 
their anger and shame at his betrayal of a friend. 
He turned and went back into his lodge, and 
would not come out again. 

"While this was going on, several men had 
hurried to the River Crow man, stopping in the 
far end of camp : * Your plan to kill the Blackfoot 
is discovered, and he is dressed and armed and 
mounted, waiting to fight you. He is like a raging 
grizzly, and his, you know, is the bear medicine. 
What are you going to do?' 

"The man did not answer them. He mounted 
his horse, and, hidden from One Horn's sight by 
the lodges, struck out for the River Crow camp 
on Little River, and fear was with him. He often 

197 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

looked back to see if he were being pursued by 
this dreadful bear medicine man who had once 
wounded him, and was now so anxious to meet 
him face to face. 

"One Horn rode back to his lodge. * Take down 
the lodge, pack up everything. We will not stay 
another day with these treacherous Crows,' he 
told them, and rounded up and caught what 
horses were needed for packing and riding. 

"Just before they were ready to leave, the 
Crow chief sent one of his women to say to One 
Horn that he was sorry for what he had done, 
very sorry that he had ever listened to the River 
Crow, and wanted to make reparation. He 
wanted to give his Blackfoot friend ten head of 
horses. 

" 'Tell him that I will not accept anything from 
him,' One Horn answered the woman. And he 
and his outfit started for the north and were soon 
out of sight of the Crow camp. 

" Some days afterward they arrived at the camp 
of their people on the Big River of the North, and 
had no sooner set up their lodge than One Horn 

198 



The Elk Medicine Ceremony 

called a council of the chiefs and told them where 
he had been and for what purpose. 

"'Although I accomplished nothing, I am glad 
I went,' he told them. 'I now know the Crows. 
They are liars all, and not to be trusted. I ad- 
vise that we begin a steady war against them.' 

"The other chiefs agreed to that. Messengers 
were sent to the brother tribes, the Bloods and 
the North Blackfeet, and to the Gros Ventres, 
friends of the Blackfeet, and the war was started. 
Little by little, summer after summer, they drove 
the Crows southward, killing many of them, and 
were not satisfied until they forced them to the 
country south of the Elk River, ^ where they have 
ever since remained. So, because of their treach- 
ery, the Crows lost a great and rich country." 

THE ELK MEDICINE CEREMONY 

August 1 8. 

Not in many, many years have I been so af- 
fected as I was this morning. For some days I 
have had a high fever, and have slept but little 

* Po-no-ka'-is-i-sak-ta. Elk River; the Yellowstone River. 
199 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

at night. In-si-mak'-i (Growth Woman), Yellow 
Wolf's wife, had been doctoring me with the good 
old remedy for fevers, sweet sage tea, but it 
seemed to have no effect. So Tail-Feathers-Com- 
ing-over-the-Hill announced that he would have 
his Elk Medicine ceremony for my benefit, and 
that he was sure that it would cure me of my ill- 
ness. We had it this morning, and to-night I 
have a normal pulse and the fever has left me. 
1 will not go so far as to say that it was his pray- 
ers that cured me, — prayers far better, far more 
earnest than those of any Christian preacher I 
ever heard, — but yet, I am well ! To me, all 
religions are nothing more than the codified 
superstitions of the ages, but of them all. Chris- 
tian and pagan, I like best the faith of these, my 
people, faith that the sun is the conservator of 
all life and the orderly ruler of this, our earth. 
And what absolute faith they have in their Sun- 
religion! Should Christians live as closely to 
their beliefs as the Blackfeet do to the laws of 
conduct given them by their Sun god, what a 

different, what a happy world this would be ! 

200 



The Elk Medicine Ceremony 

Before I relate the details of the ceremony, I 
must tell something of the medicine itself. 

The Blackfeet believe that, when they lie 
down and sleep, their shadows, or, as we say, 
their souls, their spiritualities, leave the body 
and go on far adventure. Their name for 
this is Ni-pup'-o-kan (my dream; my vision); 
and when they awake they really believe that 
they have experienced all the incidents of their 
dream, and relate them as having been of actual 
fact. 

When men and animals were first created, they 
had a common language, and the latter had the 
power to change themselves at will into the form 
of man. It was in that long ago time that a man 
seeking knowledge, and praying earnestly for it, 
was in his vision visited by an elk in the form of 
a man, whose name was Po-no-kai'-ut-sin-in-ah 
(Elk-Tongue Chief). 

"I have heard you praying, asking for help. 
What is it you want? Perhaps I can help you," 
the elk man said. 

The man answered : " I seek some way to relieve 
20 1 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

my people from sickness; some way to give 
them long life and happiness. Help me if you 
can do so." 

The elk man answered : " I can help you ; I will 
help you. Through what was given me in my 
vision I am in great favor with the sun, and all 
the gods of the earth, the deep waters, and the 
blue above. That medicine you shall have. I 
give it to you now!" And having said that, he 
gave the man a painted lodge, a medicine pipe- 
stem, beautifully decorated with a down-hanging 
set of tail feathers of the sage hen, and wound 
with strips of the fur of the bear and various water 
animals. And with it, wrapped in clean buck- 
skins, were the skins of birds and animals, all 
those that live upon the water and in the water, 
and feed upon the life in the water, fish, and all 
the various water insects. And having given the 
man all this, he taught him how to use it, with 
all the prayers and ceremonies that go with it. 
The man took all this to his home, and used it, 
and found that it was great medicine, and ever 
since that time the Elk Medicine Lodge and the 

ao2 



The Elk Medicine Ceremony 

things that go with it have been handed down 
from generation to generation, to this day. 

So now we come to the ceremony that was 
given to-day for the curing of my illness. It was 
my lucky day ! Early in the morning Mr. Herford 
T. Cowling, chief photographer for the United 
States Reclamation Service, arrived at the Great 
Northern Railway Company's St. Mary's Camp 
and I went to him and asked if he would take 
moving pictures of the ceremony, provided the 
Indians were willing to have him do it. He en- 
thusiastically replied that he would be very glad 
to take it all in with his crank-machine, so I 
went to my people to ask if they would permit 
it to be done. They objected, saying that the 
ceremony was so sacred that even the presence 
of white people, antagonistic all of them to their 
religion, would profane it. They did not count 
me. I was one of them! 

Said I: "Listen, my relatives, and brothers 
all! We are all soon to die, and as we pass away 
the whole of the old life goes with us. Your 
children, taken away from you by the whites, 

203 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

put in school and taught the white men's religion 
and manner of Uving, will know nothing about 
the way their fathers lived unless I put it all 
down in writing for all time to come. That I am 
doing. And how much more interesting it will 
be if I can have pictures to go with it! Say yes! 
Let us have, with this that you are to do to-day, 
the living pictures of it all!" 

There followed a long silence, all considering 
my request. Finally, my best of friends, Tail- 
Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill, wiped tears- from 
his eyes, and said, brokenly : " Ap-i-kun -i is right. 
The whites take our children from us and teach 
them false beliefs. But they teach them to read, 
and it may be, that, after we have all gone on to 
the Sand Hills, ^ they will read our brother's 
writings and see us as we were, making our 
prayers to the gods, and, having read and seen 
the pictures of it all, return to the one true faith. 
I say, let the picture man come!" 

* The Sand Hills (Spat-si-kwo). The drear after-life abode 
of the Blackfeet. Their shadows there had a cold, cheerless 
imitation of life. 

204 



The Elk Medicine Ceremony 

" Ai! Ai! Let him cornel" all cried, and I sent 
a messenger for him. 

During the ceremony he took six hundred feet 
of it, and so for all time to come is preserved 
the interesting ceremony of the Elk Medicine. 

The ceremony is always given in a closed 
lodge, but this time we threw the front of it wide 
open, so that the lens of that moving-picture 
machine could take it all in. 

As I have said, Tail-Feathers-Coming-over- 
the-Hill is old, feeble, half-blind, and is himself 
unable to go through parts of the ceremony. So, 
on the evening before this came off, he sent for 
Chief Crow and his wife, living near, to help 
him out. Chief Crow is also a medicine man, his 
wife, of course, a medicine woman, and he owns 
the Seizer's medicine pipe. Four other medicine 
men were there, all of them taking part in the 
ceremony. In each of the three tribes of the 
Blackfeet there is a secret society of the medicine 
men, and the members help one another in their 
ceremonies, and they and they only can dance 
with the sacred symbols of their rites. 

205 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

When I went into the lodge the sacred medi- 
cines were hanging directly over the owner's 
couch, opposite the doorway. They were the 
sacred pipestem and many skins of water ani- 
mals and birds enclosed in various wrappings, 
and a buffalo rawhide painted pouch containing 
sacks of various colored sacred paints. On Tail- 
Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill's left sat his med- 
icine wife. I took my seat close to him on his 
right. Back of me, and all around the right side 
of the lodge from me, were a number of women. 
On the other side, opposite them, were the men 
and Chief Crow's medicine wife. 

The ceremony opened with a prayer by Tail- 
Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill, beseeching the 
gods to look with favor upon what was to be 
done. Then his wife arose and undid the fasten- 
ings of the medicines, and slowly, reverently, 
laid them on the couch between her and her 
husband. The opening song then began, the song 
of Po-no-kai -ut-sin-in-ah (Elk-Tongue Chief). 
Oh, how I would like to inscribe that song here ! 
Alice Fletcher says — and I know that she is 

206 



The Elk Medicine Ceremony 

right — that all Indian music is classical. But 
their tonal scale is far different from ours; we 
have not one musical instrument that can repro- 
duce it. Never, never lived a white man who 
could sing these Blackfeet songs. As a boy, year 
after year, I tried to sing them, and always 
failed; one has to take them in with his mother's 
milk in order to sing them correctly. 

The song ended. The medicine woman, with 
a pair of sacred red-painted willow tongs, took 
a coal from the fire, placed it just in front of the 
sacred medicines, and dropped upon it a pinch 
of sweet grass. It burned, and, as the perfumed 
smoke arose, she and her man grasped handfuls 
of it and stroked their bodies, thus purifying 
themselves before handling the medicines. Then, 
all present joining in, they sang the song of the 
real bear, the grizzly, while the medicine woman 
unfastened the outer wrapping of the medicine 
pipestem roll, which was bound with a strip of 
fur from a grizzly's back; and at the same time, 
in keeping with the time of the song, they made 
the sign for the bear, closed hands held upon 

207 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

each side of the head, representing its wide, 
rounding ears. 

That song finished, the song of the buffalo 
began, the medicine man and the medicine 
woman clenching their hands and alternately 
putting one out before the other, representing 
the deliberate, ponderous tread of the animals 
as they traveled to and from the water. When 
that song was finished — and it was one to stir 
one's inmost soul — another wrapping, bound 
with buffalo fur, was undone, and all present 
besought the gods to have pity upon them. 

Next came the fourth and last song, the song 
of the beaver, chief of water animals. And while 
it was being sung, the medicine woman unrolled 
the fourth and last wrapping, and the sacred 
medicine pipes tem lay in sight of us all. At that 
all the women gave shrill cries of triumph, of 
victory; and all the medicine men beginning a 
solemn chant to the Sun, Chief Crow advanced, 
received from the medicine wife of my old friend 
the sacred stem, and, extending the fan of 
feathers drooping from it, held it aloft and 

208 



The Elk Medicine Ceremony 

danced in time with the song to the doorway of 
the lodge and back again, and returned the stem 
to my friend, who reverently took and em- 
braced it, and made a short prayer to the gods 
for the long life, good health, and happiness 
of us all, especially the little children of the 
tribe. 

Next came my part in the ceremony. My old 
relative and friend felt around in his medicine 
pouch, got out a small sack of a-san', the sacred 
red paint, and painted my face with it, at the 
same time beseeching the gods to give me, his 
brother, Ap-i-kun'i, long life, good health, and 
prosperity in all things. Then, having finished 
the painting and the prayer, he had his wife hand 
Chief Crow, his helper, the long red-painted 
wooden flute that goes with the medicine, and 
the latter, holding it aloft, danced with it almost 
to the doorway of the lodge, where he blew sev- 
eral soft, clear notes to the four corners of the 
earth, and then returned the flute to the woman. 
This was the Elk Medicine whistle, for imitating 
the weird call of that animal, and was used just 

1209 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

now to call him, the ancient Elk god, to give me 
his favor, his pity. My friend then facing me, 
upon his knees began the thunder song, in which 
all joined, and, spreading his blanket-clad arms 
wide to represent the thunder bird wings, hov- 
ered before me, fanned me with his wings, the 
intent being to waft to me from him the sacred 
power. That over, all arose, and passing in line 
from the lodge. Chief Crow leading, danced 
through the camp and back again, and the 
ceremony ended. 

I cannot begin to express how I felt all through 
the ceremony. I honored my people for their 
sincere faith, their reverence for their gods. And 
my thoughts went back to the time when they 
were the lords of these plains and mountains and 
knew not want. And not so very long ago they 
were a tribe of three thousand members, and 
now they number only eight or nine hundred, 
and those who have gone have mostly gone from 
want, from their susceptibility to disease be- 
cause of lack of proper nourishment. Do you 
wonder that they feel bitterly toward the whites, 

2IO 



The Under- Water People 

who have taken from them everything that 
made their Hfe worth living? 

August 27. 

Because we were to-day to embark upon the 
deep, dark waters of this lake, we yesterday had 
a little ceremony on the shore, beseeching the 
dread Under-Water People to have pity upon 
us and allow us to pass in safety over their do- 
main. We had a little fire close to the water's 
edge, and having filled and lighted his pipe with 
a coal taken from it with his sacred red tongs, 
old Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill smoked 
and made his prayers, at the same time casting 
into the water a little sack of his medicines as a 
sacrifice to the gods. It was a short ceremony, 
but satisfied even the most timid of the women 
that all would be well with them during their 
voyage upon the lake. 

And so, where we once had rude rafts of logs, 
lashed together with rawhide ropes, we this 
morning embarked in good boats and went all 
up the beautiful lake, past Red Eagle, and Little 

211 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

Chief, and Almost-a-Dog Mountains to the head 
of the lake, and looking back at the slope of 
Milk River Ridge saw the far-apart, enormous 
footprints of Heavy Runner, keeper of the 
buffalo. 

Away back in ancient times, after Old Man 
had made buffalo and they had increased and 
covered the plains, they had great desire to wan- 
der westward and see what might be on the other 
side of the great mountains. The people — the 
Blackfeet — learning of this were greatly dis- 
tressed. The far side of the mountains, away 
west and still westward to the shores of the 
Everywhere-Water, was the country of their 
enemies, many tribes of them, and should they 
get possession of the buffalo herds they would 
never let them return. What to do about it they 
had no idea, so they called upon Old Man for 
help. 

Said he : "I made the buffalo to be plains ani- 
mals, and here upon these plains they shall re- 
main, and other-side tribes shall come to you 
and ask permission to kill a few of them now 

212 



Old Man and the Buffalo 

and then. So, don't worry. Go home now and at- 
tend to your affairs. All shall be well with you." 
The people went home. They saw that the 
buffalo remained upon the plains in apparently 
as great numbers as ever. But some of the hunt- 
ers, to learn for sure if they were all there, as- 
cended the different passes of the mountains and 
went down the other side for some distance. 
There were no buffalo, not even a few straggling 
bulls on the other side, and they wondered how 
Old Man was keeping them bacL They soon 
learned. In a vision it was revealed to an old 
medicine man that a huge god, a man of enor- 
mous stature, was patrolling the mountains 
from far south to the everlasting snow of the 
north, and with a club driving the buffalo back 
eastward as fast as they came anywhere near 
the summit of the range. And so it was that the 
other tribes — those of the west — never got the 
buffalo. 

On our way down the lake we passed the beau- 
tiful Sun Camp and the chalets of the Great 

213 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

Northern, perched upon the very spot where 
Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill and I killed 
many a bighorn and goat in times gone by. It 
was a favorite wintering place of the animals, 
for the winds kept the steep mountain slope 
practically bare from snow. And passing the 
mouth of the creek just above the camp, I re- 
membered that I had named it after Thomas, 
and Colonel Robert, and the Honorable Cecil 
Baring, of London, with whom I often hunted 
back in the eighties. In those days there were 
many bighorn and goats, and not a few grizzlies 
back in the basin at the head of the creek. And 
what amusing and sometimes exciting adven- 
tures we had with them ! One morning we espied 
a big "billy" goat on a ledge, and just as we saw 
him he moved to the back side of it and lay down, 
showing only an inch or two of the top of his 
back. 

"Who will go up and rout him out, so that 
I can get a shot ? " asked Colonel Baring, 
and Jack Bean, of Yellowstone fame, volun- 
teered. 

214 



Jack Bean and the Goat 

It was to be a steep, almost straight-up climb, 
so Jack laid down his rifle and started without 
encumbrance of any kind. At last he reached 
the shelf and stood up on it, and that "billy" 
came for him, head down! And Jack! Never 
have I seen a man come down a dangerous cliff 
so fast as he did! And he kept coming, falling, 
sliding, rolling, and then Colonel Baring fired 
and dropped the goat, and man and animal came 
the rest of the way to the foot of the place to- 
gether! We had been too much concerned for the 
safety of our friend to laugh, but when he at last 
stood up and faced us, bloody, half-naked, but 
not seriously hurt, we roared. But Jack never 
even smiled: "Who would have thought that a 
blankety-blank goat would go for a fellow!" he 
exclaimed ; and he went to the creek to repair the 
damages to his person. 

On this day, halting here and there along the 
lake, we took some views of the scenery and of 
our people, and at sunset were back in our 
lodges. For some of us it is a last trip over the 
old, familiar ground. My two old friends, Tail- 

215 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill and Yellow Wolf, 
must soon go on to their Shadow Land! 

We were not too tired to-night for story-telling, 
so, after the children had been put to bed and 
all was quiet, Takes-Gun-Ahead gave us the fol- 
lowing, the story of tobacco, which is called 



na-wak'-o-sis 

"In that long ago time when the earth was 
young, and people had not long been made, a | 
man threw some weeds upon a fire and found 
that the odor, the smoke from their burning, was 
very pleasant. That night he had a vision and 
learned that this plant was strong medicine; 
that, when smoked in a pipe, which his vision 
explained to him how to make, it would be the 
right thing with which to offer prayers to the 
gods. He also taught the man the prayers and 
all the ceremony that went with the prayers; and 
told him how to plant the weeds, from the seeds 
on their tops, so that he could always have plenty 

of it. 

216 



The Story of Tobacco 

"This man was very much pleased with what 
he had learned. He went to his three brother 
medicine men and told them all about it, and 
the four of them formed a society of themselves 
and no others, for the raising of the weed and its 
proper uses. But they were very stingy with this 
weed, which they named na-wak'-o-sis, and would 
only now and then give the people a leaf of 
it, although they raised large numbers of the 
stalks in every summer time. 

"A young man named Lone Bull was very 
anxious to become a member of this medicine 
society, but because he had no medicines and 
knew not the rites of it, he was told that he could 
not join it. At that time the camp of the people 
was close under Chief Mountain. He left it, with 
his woman and his pack dogs, and moved up to 
the river running out of the Inside Lakes, and 
there set up his lodge. Said he then to his woman: 
'I have come up here to get medicines; in some 
way to find things that will enable me to become 
a raiser of na-wak'-o-sis. If I can do that, I shall 
be of great help to the people. Now, then, I am 

217 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

going to hunt and collect all the medicine skins 
I can find, and you stay at home, take care of 
the lodge, gather wood, and cook what meat we 
need. I shall bring in plenty of fat meat along 
with the skins.' 

"The man went hunting every day, and the 
woman remained at home. One day, when the 
man was gone, she thought she heard singing; 
beautiful singing; but look where she would she 
could see no singers. She spoke to the man about 
it when he came home that evening, and made 
him feel uneasy : 'If you hear it again, look about 
more carefully,' he told her. 

"She heard it the next day, and this time lo- 
cated it, right under the lodge. She went out 
to the bank of the river and looked at the bank: 
there, under the water, were beaver holes in it, 
and beaver cuttings upon the sandy bottom, and 
by that she knew that the lodge had been set 
up above a bank beaver's home, and that beavers 
were the singers. She went back to the lodge, 
lay down and put her ear to the ground, and 
could then hear them plainly, and was pleased. 

218 



The Story of Tobacco 

Their singing was so good that it was all that 
she could do to stop listening to them and begin 
cooking the evening meal. 

"When Lone Bull came home that night she 
told him what she had learned, but he could hear 
nothing, although he put his ear close to the 
ground. Nor could he hear the singing the next 
evening, nor the next, although his woman could 
hear it plainly. So now the woman got her knife 
and cut a round hole in the ground, and Lone 
Bull laid his head in it and could then hear the 
singing. He told her to make the hole deeper; 
larger. She did so, and cut clear through the 
ground, and looking down he could see the bea- 
vers sitting in their home, singing beautiful 
songs, and dancing strange and beautiful dances 
in time to them. 

" ' Younger brothers, have pity on me ! ' he cried. 
* Oh, my young brothers, teach me your medicine ! ' 

"They looked up and saw him, and one an- 
swered: 'Close the hole that you have made, 
because the light disturbs us, and we will soon 

be with you.' 

219 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"They soon came in through the doorway, four 
fine-looking men, beautifully dressed. They had 
changed themselves from beavers to men. They 
took seats, and then one of them said to Lone 
Bull : 'Elder brother, what is it that you want of 
us? How can we help you?' 

"Lone Bull told them what it was: his great 
desire to obtain na-zvak' -o-sis and grow it for the 
people. 

"'We have that plant; like us it is from the 
water, a water medicine,' the beaver man told 
him; 'but before you can use it you have much 
to do, much to learn. You have to learn all our 
songs and prayers and dances and different cere- 
monies, and gather for the ceremonies a skin of 
every animal and bird that is of the water, one 
of each except the beavers, and of them there 
must be two. You know these animals and birds : 
otter, mink, muskrat; different kinds of ducks; 
the fish hawk, and all the other birds that get 
their food from the life of the water. Why? Be- 
cause there are two great life-givers of this world : 
the sun, which gives heat, and water, that makes 

220 



The Story of Tobacco 

growth, and in our ceremonies the skins of these 
different animals are symbols of the water.' 

"'I shall collect them all, so teach me every- 
thing,' Lone Bull told them. And they began 
that very night. 

"Day after day Lone Bull hunted the animals 
and birds, brought in their skins for his woman 
to cure, and night after night the beavers taught 
him their medicine, all the sacred prayers and 
dances and ceremonies of it. And at last he knew 
them all thoroughly. 

"Then, one night, the beaver chief handed 
him some stalks of na-^ak^-o-sis, the top stems 
all covered with little round seeds. 

"'These,' said he, *are the children of the big- 
leaved plants ; put them into the ground and they 
will grow and make other plants that bear chil- 
dren. And now, I must tell you just how to plant: 
Gather a great, long, wide pile of old dry logs, 
dry brush and weeds, and set it afire. The heat 
from it will burn the ground, burn the sod, and 
make everything soft under it. Then, when the 
place has cooled, gather from around badger 



221 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

holes, squirrel holes, and wherever you can find 
it, plenty of the brown earth they have thrown 
out, and mix it with the burned black earth, so 
that it will not pack hard around the seeds, and 
keep them from coming up into the sunlight. 

"'After you have taken all the seeds from the 
stems, you must put them in a sack and not 
touch them again with your hands. With an 
antelope horn you will make row after row of 
little holes all across the burned ground and only 
a hand apart, and with a buffalo-horn spoon 
drop a seed into each hole. When that is done, 
and it will require a long time, you and yours are 
to dance along each row of seed, singing the sa- 
cred songs, your feet lightly pressing down the 
ground over the seed. At the end of a row you 
must step across to the next row, and dance back- 
ward on that one, and forward on the next, and 
so on until the last row has been pressed down, 
and all your songs have been sung. Then you 
can go away from the place for a time. Return 
after one moon has passed, and you will find that 
the young plants have grown above the ground. 



222 



The Story of Tobacco 

Watch them, that insects do not destroy them. 
Give them water if the rains fail you. They will 
grow all summer, and fade with the ripening of 
the choke-cherries. Cut them then, care well for 
them, and you and your people will have a 
plenty for your winter smokes and ceremonies. 
There! I have told you all!' 

"It was planting-time then. Lone Bull moved 
right up to the foot of the lower one of the Inside 
Lakes, and did everything that he had been told 
to do, his wife helping him in every way. People 
hunting from down Chief Mountain way came 
and saw his growing plants, and went home and 
told about them. The four medicine men just 
laughed. * Ha!' They cried. ^Hehas non^z-w^^'- 
o-sis! He wanted to join us and we would not let 
him into our society. He but plants some useless 

weed.' 

"But later on, just as their planting was get- 
ting ripe, a terrible hailstorm came along and 
destroyed it all; every leaf was cut into fine 
pieces! They cried from grief! Then they said 
among themselves: 'Na^ak'^-sis we must 

223 



\ 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

have or our medicines will be without power. It 
may be that this Lone Bull really has the true 
plants : let us go up and see them.' 

"They went, all the people with them, and saw 
that he had the sacred plants. The hailstorm had 
come nowhere near his place. 

"Said they to him then: 'You have a big 
planting, and we will help you gather it, and you 
and we four will use it. You shall join us.' 

"Lone Bull laughed long before he answered: 
'I need no help from you. You shall each have 
a little of my planting for your own use, and you 
shall pay me well for it. The rest, excepting what 
I need, I shall give to the people, and hereafter 
they will always have all that they need of the 
plants.' 

"And as he said that he would do, so he did, 
and the people gave him great praise and honor 
for it all, and he lived to great age. Kyi! Why 
not? He had the beaver — the water medicine! 
It is a powerful medicine to this day!" 

A visitor in our camp this evening told a tale 

224 



How Mountains are Named 

that ill pleases us. There is a tourist camp away 
up in Gun-Sight Pass, one of the most weirdly 
beautiful places in this whole country. There, 
the other day, an employee was putting up a 
table on which were painted arrows pointing 
to the different mountains, the name of each 
peak alongside its particular arrow. 

A tourist standing near and watching the 
work suddenly exclaimed: "Why, over there is 
a peak that has no name. Can you not name it 
after me?" 

"Certainly I can," the employee answered; 
and painted another arrow and inscribed beside 
it:"LehnertPeak." 

"And over there is a fine waterfall," the tour- 
ist said. "Will you please name it after my little 
daughter?" 

"Sure!" said the man; and painted another 
arrow pointing to "Mary Frances Falls." 

Enough said! 



V 

Iks-i'-kwo-yi-a-tuk-tai (Swift Current 
River) 

September i. 

WE moved up here the other day and 
made camp beside one of the most 
lovely lakes in all this Rocky Moun- 
tain country. In my time we called it Beaver 
Woman's Lake. It is now McDermott Lake. 
And what a name that is for one of Nature's 
gems! There are names for other lakes and 
peaks here just as bad as that, but we shall 
have nothing to say about them here. Only by 
an act of Congress can we get what we want 
done, and we have faith that within a reasonable 
time all these mountains and lakes and streams 
will bear the names of the great chiefs, medicine 
men, and warriors who traversed them before 
the white men came. 

Some of us — all excepting our two old men 
226 



The Jealous Women 

and the women — have been riding over the 
different trails here, viewing the glaciers and 
other places of interest, especially Iceberg Lake, 
where we saw a mass of ice as large as a house 
part from the glacier, splash down into the deep 
lake, and disappear, and after a time come up from 
the depths to the surface and create another 
commotion of the waters. It was a grand sight! 
Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill says that 
the lake with the unpronounceable white man's 
name — McDermott — should be called Jeal- 
ous Women's Lake; that away back in the days 
of his youth, when the Kootenai Indians occa- 
sionally came to camp and hunt with the Black- 
feet, he had a youthful friend of the mountain 
tribe who told him the following story: — 

THE JEALOUS WOMEN 

"In those days a young Kootenai, good of 

heart, a great hunter, and very brave, married 

twin sisters so alike that except for one thing 

they could not be told apart: one was a slow, the 

other a very fast, talker. 

227 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

"In time the fast talker, named Marmot, be- 
came jealous of her sister, Camas, complaining 
all the time that she had to do the most of the 
lodge work, and that she was sure Camas said 
bad things about her to their man. Camas 
denied all this. *I have never tried to place my- 
self first with our man,' she said. 'We are twins; 
I love you dearly; our man's heart is so big that 
it holds us both in equal love. Now, be sensible ! 
Cast out your bad thoughts for they are all 
wrong.' 

"But Marmot persisted in believing that she 
was neglected ; that her sister had all their 
man's affection; and she finally went to him 
with her complaint. He laughed. 'I love you 
just as much as I do your sister,' he said. 'Now, 
just think back and show me when and in 
what way I have shown that she is first with 
me!' 

"Marmot sat down and thought. She thought 
a long time; remained silent. The man was very 
patient with her; he waited for her answer, but it 
did not come. At last he said: 'Well, you have 

228 



The Jealous Women 

thought a long time. Have you found one thing 
in which I gave her preference?' 

"'No, I haven't, but all the same I believe 
that you love her best,' Marmot answered; and 
got up and went about her work. 

"The man shook his head, made no answer to 
that, and took up his weapons and went hunting 
down the river. At the time he was camped right 
here at this lake. 

"The man had not gone far, moving slowly, 
carefully, through the timber and brush along 
the river, when he heard ahead a great splashing 
in the water, and, going closer, found that it was 
caused by two otters playing. They would chase 
each other in the water, then climb the bank 
and go as swift as arrows from a bow down a 
slide that they had made, and again chase and 
tumble each other over in the water. The man 
crept closer to the slide, an arrow in his bow, 
another in his hand, and, watching his chance, 
shot one of the players. He tried to get the 
other, but it dived and was gone before he could 
fit the other arrow to his bow: 'It is too bad that 

229 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

I did n't get the other. I would have liked a 
skin of these medicine skins for each of my 
women,' he said to himself. 

"He took the otter home and handed it to 
Camas. *That is yours,' he said. 'There were 
two of them. To-morrow, Marmot, I will get the 
other for you, and then you will each have a 
strong medicine skin.' 

"Marmot said nothing, but looked cross. 

"The man went hunting the next day but 
he could not find the other otter. He searched 
the river for many days and could not find 
one. 

"And as the days passed, Marmot became more 
and more angry, and finally said to her sister: 
'I have proof now that our man loves you best. 
He gave you the otter; he does not even try to 
get one for me. He hunts other animals every 
day, bighorn, goats, animals that live nowhere 
near the haunts of the otter.' 

"'Now, don't be foolish!' Camas answered. 
* You know as well as I do that he has tried and 
tried to get the other otter for you. But at the 

230 



The Jealous Women 

same time he has to get meat for us : that is why- 
he hunts the mountain animals.' 

"'Camas, the two of us can no longer live in 
this lodge,' cried Marmot. 'You are a bad woman ! 
I hate you! I will fight you any way you say to 
see which of us shall be our man's one wifel' 

"Then it was that, for the first time, Camas 
became angry: 'We have no weapons to fight 
with,' she answered, 'but I propose this: We 
will swim this lake across and back and across 
and back until one of us becomes tired and 
drowns! Now, crazy woman, what do you say 
to that.?' 

'"Come on! Come on!' Marmot cried, and 
ran to the shore and tore off her clothes. So did 
Camas, and the two rushed into the water and 
began their swim of hate. They crossed the lake; 
turned and came back; crossed again and started 
back, Camas well in the lead. She reached the 
shore in front of the lodge, dragged herself out 
on the shore, and turned. Her sister had gone 
down. There was not even a ripple on the still 
water. Marmot was drowned. Hardly knowing 

231 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

what she did, she put on her clothes and went 
into the lodge and cried and cried. The man 
came home. She was still crying. He asked her 
where Marmot was, and she cried all the harder, 
but at last told him all. Then the man cried. 
Together the two mourned for a long time, and 
searched the lake for the body of the lost one, 
and could not find it. So they moved away from 
the unhappy place and returned to the camp of 
their people, but it was a long time, a very long 
time, before they ceased mourning, and never 
again would they go anywhere near the lake. 
"Yes, this is the Lake of the Jealous Women!" 



VI 

Ni-NA Us-TAK-wi (Chief Mountain) 

September 7. 

WE came up here the other day to the 
foot of this great landmark of the 
country, and made camp beside a 
running spring in the edge of the timber. The 
mountain is most appropriately named. It is the 
outer one of an eastward projecting spur of the 
range, and is higher than any of the peaks behind 
it. A chief, a leader, should always be taller, 
more conspicuous in every way than his follow- 
ers. This mountain gradually slopes up east- 
ward from the one behind it to an altitude of 
9056 feet, then drops in a sheer cliff several thou- 
sand feet to its steep slope running down to 
the plain. From several hundred miles to the 
north, and an equal distance to the south, and 
from the Bear Paw Mountains to the east, it can 
be plainly seen, grim, majestic, a veritable Chief 
of Mountains, and for that reason the Blackfeet 
so named it in the long ago. 

^33 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

The way to climb the mountain is by the long, 
narrow, and in places cut-walled ridge running 
up toward its summit from the west, and then 
one has but one cliff to surmount, the one almost 
at its crest. Only men and goats and bighorn 
can scale that cliff, but on the extreme summit 
lies an old buffalo skull, taken there by a Black- 
foot in the long ago for a pillow rest while getting 
his medicine dream. There he fasted for days, 
and at last, in his weakened condition resulting 
from want of food and water, got his vision, his 
medicine which was to be his guardian through 
life. Who was it that came to him in his fasting 
dreams? Ancient Buffalo, perhaps; or, maybe, 
Morning Star. Whoever it was, he went stagger- 
ing down the mountain and to camp, absolutely 
certain that he had found his guardian spirit, his 
medium for favor with the greatest god of all, 
the Sun, supreme ruler of this earth. 

We are here again upon our own ground, the 
Blackfeet Reservation, and so once more have 
meat in camp, fat bighorn and fat mule deer, 
killed by our hunters. This was once a great 

234 



I 



The Wise Man 

wintering place for deer and elk, and, higher up, 
for bighorn. Some years ago a hunter, Na-mik'- 
ai-yi by name, trailed a band of elk around to 
the ridge behind the mountain and up its narrow 
way until they came to the foot of the cliff near 
the summit and could go no farther. There they 
turned back toward him and he fired one shot and 
dropped the leader. The others, afraid to try to 
dash past him, chose the one alternative: they 
rushed to the high cliff there on the north side 
of the ridge, and sprang from it, and were all 
killed by the fall, eighty head of them! 

September 8. 
Last night, after our feast of ni-tap'-i-wak-sin 
(real meat) we gathered in Yellow Wolf's lodge 
for a smoke and a talk, and our host gave us 
a little story that I must here set down, the 
story of 

THE WISE MAN* 

"Here, under this mountain, the people were 
encamped and two of them were Wise Man ^ 

1 Mo-kuk'-i In-ah. 
235 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

and his woman. He was so named because he 
was always finding out how to do useful things. 

"Up to the time of this encampment the 
people had had nothing to wear but the plainest 
kind of garments, shirts, leggins, gowns, moc- 
casins, all made of plain tanned leather of dif- 
ferent kinds. Wise Man thought long about this, 
and finally said to his wife: 'Let us move away 
from camp for a time, and go farther into the 
mountains. I have a plan that I want to try 
by myself.' 

"The next morning they packed their dpgs 
and moved up to the foot of the Inside Lakes, 
crossed the outlet, and made camp. Wise Man 
then did some hunting, killed plenty of meat 
for his wife and the dogs, and began on his 
plan for making clothing more pleasing to the 
eye. He went up on the high ridge between the 
lakes and Little River and dug an eagle trap. 
That is, he dug a pit somewhat longer and wider 
than his body, and quite deep, and killed a deer 
and laid it beside the pit, and slashed its body so 
that the liver protruded. He then got into the 

236 



The Wise Man 

pit, covered the top of it with willow sticks and 
grass, and waited, hoping that eagles would see 
the deer and come to eat it. They did come; he 
could hear the heavy swish of their wings as they 
sailed down upon it; and as they were eating the 
liver he would cautiously reach up, grasp them 
by the legs, pull them down into the pit, and 
kneeling upon them crush out their life. In this 
way, one at a time, he caught many eagles, and 
took them home as he caught them, and took 
from their bodies the tail feathers, the iluify 
plume feathers, and others that he thought 
would answer his purpose. 

"They had a very rank, unpleasant odor, these 
feathers ; so, when he thought that he had enough 
of them, he had his woman cover the floor of the 
lodge with a thick layer of sweet sage, upon 
which he carefully spread them. He then threw 
a quantity of sweetgrass upon the fire, and, 
running from the lodge, the two tightly closed 
it and kept the smoke inside. This last they did 
three or four times until the feathers lost their 
bad odor, and were perfumed with the pleasant 

237 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

odor of sweetgrass and sweet sage, both per- 
fumes sacred to the gods, as they afterward 
learned. 

"Winter was now come, and Wise Man began 
to hunt weasels, brown and common of appear- 
ance in summer, but white and beautiful in 
winter. This was more difficult work than 
trapping eagles, but by setting many snares he 
caught during the winter more than a hundred 
of them. He then made a headdress of some of 
the eagle tail feathers, and suspended from it 
a number of weasel skins, and along the seams 
of his shirt and leggins tied a number of the 
weasel skins. He then put on the headdress and 
his ornamental clothes and stood up and asked 
his woman how he appeared in them. 

"*You seem to have become a different man,' 
she answered. 'You look very brave, very hand- 
some. The clothes are beautiful.' 

"'They are of better appearance than they 
were,' he said, 'but I am not yet satisfied. 
Perhaps I can improve them; but first I have to 
do something for you.' 

238 



The Wise Man 

"Wise Man put away his new clothes, and in 
old ones hunted elk, taking from them their two 
tushes, and in the evening boring holes in the 
soft part. Having collected two hundred, he 
sewed them in rows on the breast and the back 
of his woman's new gown, and both saw that it 
was then a handsome gown. 

"Said the woman: 'There! We are now com- 
plete; we have fine appearance. Let us go home 
and show the people what we have done.' 

"'No,' Wise Man answered; 'something is 
lacking, something that will make our clothes 
really beautiful. I have done all that I can with- 
out help, and now I shall ask the gods to show 
me what more to do.' 

"Perhaps it was the gods that directed his 
footsteps the next day. As he was going through 
the timber he came upon the remains of a por- 
cupine, its quills scattered all around upon the 
ground. He sat down, took up some and exam- 
ined them, and the thought came to him that 
they could be dyed different colors and in some 
way sewed upon garments and make them of 

239 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

brighter hue. He took all that he could find, 
and killed several more porcupines, and carried 
home all the long quills to his woman and told 
her his plan. 

"Said she, 'I know that the yellow moss that 
grows on pine trees will stain anything a yellow 
that will not fade, that cannot be washed off. 
Let us seek for other colors.' 

"They sought a long time, finding a green 
color in a certain wood, a red in the juice of a 
plant, and then they dyed the quills the three 
colors. Meantime the woman had been trying 
different ways to fasten the quills to leather, and 
now, by flattening them, turning in the ends, 
and sewing them side by side with very fine sinew 
and with the finest of bone needles, she suc- 
ceeded in making long bands of them of different 
designs in the various colors. She was a long, 
long time making them, but at last she made 
enough of the bands to sew onto the arms of 
Wise Man's shirt, and down his leggins, and 
upon the neck front-and-back of her gown. 
Each was so pleased with the appearance of the 

240 



The Wise Man 

other then that they kissed and almost cried 
with joy. Early the following morning they 
packed up, crossed the river, and started for the 
camp, still here at Chief Mountain. As soon as 
they came in sight of it they stopped, put on 
their fine clothes, and then went on. The people 
saw them approaching, but not until they were 
right close to the camp were they recognized. 
Then what a crowd surrounded them, staring 
at their beautiful garments, asking questions 
without end, and as soon as they learned how 
this had all been done, they began at once to 
gather material for similar clothing. And Wise 
Man, of course, became a great man in the tribe, 
for to him was due the discovery of the way to 
make beautiful things." 

September g. 
Although nothing has been said, we have not 
been so cheerful as usual for the past few days, 
for all have known that we must soon part 
and go our several ways. Tail-Feathers-Coming- 
over-the-Hill is a sick man, and Yellow Wolf but 



Blackfeet Tales of Glacier Park 

little better, so tonight we decided to break 
camp in the morning. To-morrow night each 
family will be at home on Cutbank, Willow 
Creek, Two Medicine, and Badger, all streams 
of the Reservation, and I shall be upon my way 
to the Always-Summer-Land. 

Well, we have had a pleasant time these past 
two months, traveling and camping along our 
old trails, and yet the evenings around the lodge 
fires have not been of unalloyed joy: all have 
been tinged with sad memories of other days; 
of deep regret that the old days — days when we 
had all this great country to ourselves — are 
gone forever. And so, to-night, after our quiet, 
last evening meal together, we had no story- 
telling, no passing of the pipe; none had the 
heart for it; and I am writing these last words 
by the light of a dying fire, true symbol of the 
passing of all things. And now, by its last, blue 
flicker, I write — 

THE END 



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